THE ENGLISHMAN

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 3, Issue 693, 20 November 1933, Page 2

THE ENGLISHMAN

MR. BALDWIN DISCUSSES CHARACTERISTICS OF NATION. HUMOUR RATHER THAN WJT. Mr. Baldwin, in broadcasting an introductioft to th'e weekly series of talks on the national chamcter being given by the B.B.C., said the English character had been described as "grim individuality and the power of cooperation." "The English character," Mr. Baldwin continued, "is largely one of those contrasts. Take a small thing — 'no people grumble more than we do, but we never worry. "The more difficult the times the more cheerful we become. We are ahvays serene in times of difficulty. Seiise of Humour. "We have a glorious sense of humour, rather than a sense of wit. We can laugh at ourselves, and laughter is one of the best things God has given us. Of all men who have shown us what laughter can mean none was like Dickens. "If I may mention a living writer, I think the truest Englishmen are found in Mr. Priestley's novels. Kindliness,' sympathy with the underdog, love of home, are not these all the eharacteristics of the ordinary Englishman we all know"? "He is a strong individualist iri this — ihe does not wiant to mould himself into any common mould, to be like everyone else. Yet he can combine for service. "Some of the best things in this country have originated among our own people, with no help from Government— jfriendly society work, trades unions, our hospitals, and our education before the State took it in hand. "Then the Englishman has a profound respect for law and order. That is part of his tradition of self-govern-ment — 'ordered liberty, not disordered liberty with what invariably follows it, tyi'anny — at this moment one of the rarer things in this topsy-turvy world.

Eaith in the Fiiture. "These qualities were never more needed in the world. Let us hold on to what we are. Let us not try to be like anybody else. "With our pertinacity, with our love of freedom, with our love of ordered freedom, with our respect for law, and our individuality, and our power of 'combindng in service, I Ibelieve from my heart that our people are fitted to pass through whatever triais may be before them and to emerge, if they are true to their own best traditions, a greater people in the future than thy have been in the past." Mr. Baldwin said the iast inyasion of lEhgland, and, in many ways, the most important, was that of the Normans — jprobably one of the greatest naces that had ever lived. He always thought it a great mistake to think of the Normans whn came hiere as Frenchmen. They were Frenchmen in a sense, but they were really Gallicised Scandinavians.