THE ART OF CURSING

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXIV, 22 January 1931, Page 3

THE ART OF CURSING

HUMOROUS COMMENT An entertaining lecture on “The Art of Cursing’ was delivered in London recently by Lord David Cecil. Lady Oxford and Asquith was in the chair. The lecturer expressed regret at the decline of vituperation in recent years. All the soldiers and sailors he had known were incapable of effective vituperation. Bargees had a great name for it. but those he had met were models of old-fashioned courtesy. Authors spent most of their time today in reviewing each other’s books—favourably. If they did try to be disagreeable they did not attack pointblank, as in the old days; they made sub-acid, cutting remarks. Such methods did not deserve the name of vituperation. What- could be more feeble than the so-called “scenes’ in the House of Commons? There remained the Church. The dislikes of the Church were lively enough, as the Prayer Book controversy had shown. But though the spirit of our clergy was willing their flesh was, alas! very weak. It must also be admitted that their hatred was confined to each other. The Bishop of Birmingham, though disagreeable to people in his own Church, spoke almost with affection of “wistful agnostics.” As for the reason for this changed attitude, he did not think it was that people were any nicer than they used to be. He was 'inclined to attribute it to the advance of science, which had the effect of making people look upon themselves as mechanisms. It was clearly unreasonable to blame mechanism. But whatever the cause, this decline of hate was most distressing, and the object of his lecture was to stimulate its revival. Never could there have been so much to hate as there was today, with its modern newspapers, and modern pictures, and modern methods, and the modern theatre, and modern love, and modern music.