The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 1929. A JUDGE'S LAMENT

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 780, 28 September 1929, Page 10

The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 1929. A JUDGE'S LAMENT

THE low standard of public speaking in New Zealand (wherein cultured speech is supposed to be so perfect tlia.t even an ordinary Scot almost requires the services of an interpreter) has been condemned by Mr. Justice MacGregor, of the Supreme Court, formerly a Dunedin lawyer with a Stevensonian “love of lovely words.” Indeed, the learned judge’s verdict on the decay of oratory was such as to make him yearn for the right to declare it a capital offence, and impose the direst penalty. Personally, he could see no hope of improvement “until at least one of our talkative bores was (justifiably) shot on the public platform.” If freedom to shoot were given to bored citizens what a shambles Parliament would become within a short Parliamentary day! ITis Honour was much too merciful to suggest that the lack of oratory, or rather the prevalence of a low standard of public speaking, was the bane of New Zealand politics and local government. Nor did the wise judge go so far as to indicate that possibly his welcome idea about shooting talkative bores had been born of boredom in the law courts. But without resorting to personal violence most people will look on Parliament as the Dominion’s worst example of a national lack of oratory, “pictorial representation of thought,” and that clear thinking which alone releases a flow of eloquence. Yet what chance do politicians give themselves either to become great speakers or even famous phrase-makers, such as Disraeli who, when Bulwer Lytton said he could not vote for sonic Bill in Parliament, because of his principles, descended easily from the heights of eloquence to downright prose and replied: “Damn your principles! Stick to your party 1” A few days or nights ago Parliament and the taxpayers suffered the tedium of the record stonewalling debate of this extravagant session of party loquacity. A lone statesman took refuge in slumber, but eager politicians talked far into the night and accomplished nothing. Were they driven into such an exhausting ordeal as they experienced by a surging tide of political passion or by the irresistible urge of oratorical inspiration? They were not. Their interminable talk was dull and inane, and entirely devoted to the destruction wrought by rabbits, the counterbalancing wealth gained from the export of rabbit-skins, the supreme national benefit of providing cheaper State transport for manures, and the urgent necessity for. killing mosquitoes in Newton Gully. On such subjects how could there- he a high standard of public speaking or high flights of oratory? One wonders what might happen if a clear thinker and good speaker entered Parliament and talked with wisdom about the highest values of a nation and the relationship and duty of the self-governing Dominions in the New World to their crowded, harassed Motherland near the centre of the Old World. The British Isles occupy only one-sixtieth of the land of the Empire, and yet contain about two-thirds of the Empire’s white population. An Empire with “horizons boundless as hope” inspires its statesmen and so-called leaders of political thought to noble service and that eloquence which gives common men faith to make their nation big and best in every walk of life. And yet, and yet, our statesmen and politicians devote hours to discussing rabbits and manures. Is it surprising that judges, aloof and cool in observation, wistfully speak of shooting talkative bores? Mr. Justice MacGregor also has noted the dauger to public speaking in New Zealand from the advent of “that recent phenomenon commonly known as the ‘talkies’.” Here there can he no suggestion at ail of shooting the talkative bores in Hollywood. The whole Empire must stand four-square for the maintenance of Anglo-American friendship. But the talkies are not comparable to the dangers to public speech that lurk in American journalism and literature. One of the most popular newspaper gossip-writers in the United States today is the most prolific coiner of American slang. His innovations are published simultaneously in two hundred and one newspapers. Tie is making a fortune in recording the latest stages in the love life of half a dozen pairs of celebrities. So: “The Adele Astaire— Wm. Gaunt, Jr., romance has curdled. . . . Although it will he vigorously denied, Doug. Fairbanks retires after his next phlicker. . . . Dolly Bernard, once Tommy Guinan’s ‘heart,’ is gravely ill at Mt. Sinai hosp.”. And one word of his which has become more delightful to America than the Kellogg Pact, is spelt “plrfft.” What would Mr. Justice MacGregor say or do if this famous Broadway news-gossiper appeared before him to give evidence as an expert on pure speech and lovely literature, and said “phfft”? One fancies that, if the erudite judge refrained from shooting the fellow at first sight and sound, he would at least proclaim the slogan of his clan which once was nameless by day: “Give his home to the flames and his flesh to the eagles! Gregalaeh!”