Is 1928 Better Than 1878 Was?

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 502, 3 November 1928, Page 28

Is 1928 Better Than 1878 Was?

College Director Has His Doubts "A WORLD WITHOUT JAZZ” Are we who live in these days of perpetual thrills and marvels really better off than our forbears of the much-maligned Victorian Age? In his beginning-of-term address to the students at the Royal College of Music, Kensington, S.W., recently, Sir Hugh Allen, the director, was doubtful about it. “We are living,” he said, “in strange and exciting times, when magic—so common is it among us—has ceased to count; when on all hands marvels are everyday occurrences. “You who have been horn into them can hardly realise that the world was ever without them. But 50 years ago some of us were living in what we now call the spacious days of Victoria, when the hours—it perhaps seems to us now—moved at a leaden pace; when one could deliberate a choice or formulate an opinion without finding oneself in the middle of next week; when a mile was really a mile, and England seemed a large country full of strange places and many new* experiences. Life Without Jazz “America was so far off that it was something of an adventure to go there. The North Pole was still shrouded in mystery. Art was as yet uncubed and music knew no jazz, and the voice of the saxophone was as yet unheard.

Electricity was still iu the realm of magic; the internal combustion* engine was undreamed of and the motor fiend still dwelt in his dark abode The air was innocent of all but birds balloons, butterflies and beetles, and the taxicab driver was as yet unbegotten.”

Sir Hugh continued: “You may say, ‘How could you people in those medieval days cope with life at all when you were circumscribed and hemmed in by such appalling restrictions?’ “No motor-cars or omnibuses, no tubes, no airplanes, no reinforced concrete, no x-rays or radium, no escalators, no wireless, dictaphones, calculating machines; no television, no gramophones, no artificial silk or synthetic pearls. “You will say, ‘What a mouldy time you must have had!’ and ‘What luck for us to be born iu these more

exciting days!’ “More exciting, perhaps—but are they the better for that? More laboursaving, more time-saving. Are they the better for these?” But It Was Not Slow The young people of 40 or 50 years ago were not conscious of any slowness of life, for the reason that slowness and pace depend on the normal rate at which things go. It is only those who are old enough to compare to-day with yesterday and the day before who are aware of low greatly conditions have altered—of how much more had to be done individually then than now; how much

more patient of results we were; how willing to wait. This willingness was not a virtue but was the natural result of the absence of the many instantaneous processes which enliven us to-ua>, - ■ -ne fewness of the thrills, experiences, distractions, alarums and excursions which now punctuate and riddle our lives.

Fifty years ago the roads we walked on—walked, mind you!—were disfigured by nothing faster than a runaway horse nor disturbed by sounds more strident than the jingling of harness and the bells of bicycles. Horses and cyclists were then the fastest things on the road. Think of the difference to-day, when horses and cyclists are cursed not for passing everything else, but for blocking the traffic with their sluggish pace. Cyclists—for whom police traps used to be laid—are now- being carried by those very police into every adjacent infirmary to be healed of the wounds inflicted by the motor juggernauts » the road!