NECESSITY FOR INSANITY OR, WANTED, A FEW MADMEN

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 305, 16 March 1928, Page 14

NECESSITY FOR INSANITY OR, WANTED, A FEW MADMEN

(Written for TIIE S UK) r PH!S fair young country of ours has produced comparatively few eminent men. That, no doubt, will he accounted a fatuous remark when the youth of the Dominion and its small population are considered. I feel, however, that in spite of these things a land which an enthusiast described the other day as the "Sparta of the Southern Seas” should have given the world at least one or two supermen. To whom can we point with a vindicating finger? To Richard Seddon, to Sir Ernest Rutherford, to Mr. F. M. B. Fisher? Men of distinction, certainly, but none of them in the front rank. None of them Derby winners. X have been reading Mr. Lytton Strachey’s “Eminent Victorians,” and

a possible explanation has occurred to me: all our eminent men, all with any small pretensions to greatness, have been quite, quite sane. Mr. Strachey gives short biographies of four of the most famous personages of the age immediately preceding ours, and two at least of these were, in the suburban-drawing-room sense of the word, at all events, gloriously insane. The other two certainly had delusions. Leaving Mr. Strachey’s subjects (I had almost, in view of that gentleman's biographical method, said victims) out of the question, think of some of the other great Victorians. Tennyson, Herbert Spencer and Gladstone, for example. Imagine any one of these let looso in New Zealand to-day. Seeing that none of them ever achieved lasting fame on the football field, it is probable that they would have lived and died, if not without a grave and the decencies of burial, at least unwept, unhonoured, and unsung. Had they by some chance come to bo known publicly, and even perhaps mentioned in the newspapers, it is certain that they would have been reckoned more or less what I should describe, if I weren’t under the necessity of upholding the dignity of the printed word, as batty. Somebody said the other day that no Englishman was ever commonplace. It is equally true that no New Zealander is ever anything but commonplace. That is our national standard, and while it lasts we shall have to be content with breeding midgets. We have a mediocrity complex. Anybody whose behaviour varies in even a small degree from that of the average member of a football crowd becomes at once an object of pity and amusement. We can put up with anything but personal eccentricity, and, as has been remarked by Lorabroso and others, genius and some measure of eccentricity are almost inseparable. We tolerate, even welcome enthusiastically, the latest from America in the way of mechanical gadgets, patent foods, and negro dances. But human originality and individuality—no, never. And on this occasion the phrase cannot be qualified. Speculate a little. If Byron had been born In Remuera, what course would his life have taken? He would certainly not have written “Don Juan.” He would have bowed to environment and public opinion and become a land agent, or perhaps been hounded out of the country and have ended up in Hollywood. Imagine Milton and, say, Nietzsche, born as contemporaries in Auckland. I can see them carrying on heated newspaper correspondences on nice points of back-parlour theology. I can see them scotching the unemployment problem in dignified prose. I can see them throwing off their large energies in a hundred ways, but I cannot see them writing “Paradise Lost” and "Zarathustra|” Imagine Shelley born in Ponsonby. I fancy him. after a short, sharp struggle between his lyric genius and the atmosphere he breathed, weighing the prospects of the legal profession against those of chicken-farming. Imagine Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor of half Europe—settling the destiny of some obscure local body. imagine D’Annunzio . [Oh, please stop! You're giving me a headache.] There was a time when insanity, like revolution and illegitimacy, was respectable. Few of the great figures of history were without a taint, and when they didn't suffer that way they generally had some exciting and fascinating bodily ailment. Read Dr. McLaurin's "Post Mortem” and see for yourself. Most of the people he deals with would have: been segregated or quarantined or imprisoned if they had been born New Zealanders. All our great men are spectacularly sane, and as for physical ills, they rarely suffer anything worse than teething, or hardening of the arteries, or softening of the brain: and most of them have passed their days outside the walls of the asylum, the hospital and the gaol. Our eccentrics fare differently. When they are not dealt with in any of the above ways, they are taken, figunatively

speaking, by the scruff of the neck and the seat of the pants and pitched out on to the cold, hard pavement. Failing that, we simply ostracise them with tolerant and pitying humour. We don’t even raise the standard of electoral intelligence by allowing them to vote. Our aim is to produce model citizens and, by this path, a scattering of great men. Failing to realise the impossibility of reconciling these two ends, we have produced instead a nation of nobodies. Very decent, quiet, respectable, and fairly intelligent nobodies. But Nobodies. Enough of this jeremiad. You ask the remedy? I can only suggest recruiting our House of Representatives from the ranks of the mentally deficient (this would ensure our being governed by professional idiots, instead of . . .); making a certificate of lunaogr, endorsed by three doctors, the qualification for entrance into our universities and our Public Service: and, perhaps, making a study of the very latest American poetry the basis of our educational system. After a generation of this the race would have been thoroughly de-standardised, and we should sweep the seas. A. R. D. FAIRBURN.

For Business Men Some really sound advice on that much-neglected study, the composition of a business letter, is embodied in Mr. Herbert N. Casson’s “Better Business Letters/’ which may be commended to all whose daily tasks include the dictation of correspondence. All those dreadful cliches such as “assuring you of our prompt attention.” “your esteemed favour,” "I have before me your letter,” “in connection therewith,” “soliciting a continuance of your favours,” and the like, receive short shrift from Mr. Casson who enters his protest, also, against “ult., inst., and prox.” and that deadly combination “as per.” It is not only with the grammatical side of the question that he is interested, and in this book may be found sound advice

on salesmanship. The difference between "I suppose you do not want” and “of course you will need” is marked, but many writers of business letters have not plumbed the psychological effect of direct appeal. Separate chapters are devoted to the discussion of sales letters, to answering (and writing) letters of complaint, and to the construction of collection letters. A most useful little book.

“Better Business Letters.” Cornstalk Publishing Co., Ltd-, Sydney. Our copy from Angus and Robertson, Ltd., Sydney.