THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. THURSDAY, DECEMBER 10, 1908. FICKLENESS IN PUBLIC OPINION.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 3066, 10 December 1908, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. THURSDAY, DECEMBER 10, 1908. FICKLENESS IN PUBLIC OPINION.

"Straws show the current." In a recent review ot the cricket season published in one of the English dailies, a curious fact was elicited. Up to a certain point, the interest manifested by the public in country cricket was unusually and the attendances at matches satisfactory; then all was suddenly changed, and there has been n® recovery. The turn of the current was due to the passionate interest taken in the Olympic sports at the Stadium. This sufficed to swerve the attention of the public effectually for a fortnight away from national to international sporting interests, culminating in the almost tragic isaue of the Marathon race in Do'rando Pietri's collapse at the moment of victory. After this the tamed interest of cricket had no chance to reassert itself. The psychological moment had passed. We have here a picture in miniature of one of the most remarkable fea-

tures of modern life. The age of newspapers has, in the first place, greatly intensified the interest of humanity in public affairs of all kinds. In simpler times, when news travelled slowly and uncertainly from place to place, the interest of most p«.opie was Jimited to events of merely local importance, and only at critical moments, when big world-shaking events took place, were their minds absorbed for a while in the wider stream of | affairs. There was a certain bovine slowness in the movement and drift of public interest from one topic to another. A great battle filled the imagination of multitudes for weeks and months; a terrible accident was threshed out in all its harrowing details in every pothouse within range of information: a change of Government obsessed the communal mind for long periods of slow and careful consideration. It was thus possibl3 to maintain something like a iue equilibrium between passing events and the stabler interests of life. Men's minds were not dragged to and fro from the things that permanently mattered to the things of the moment, which to-day are and tomorrow are not of interest to anyone. Newspapers, however, have changed all that. They have extended, popularised, and intensified, the interest of the reading public—i.e, of practically the whole community — in the mere rush of passing events, irrespective of their real importan

By the extraordinary vividness with which they are able, under the methods of the new journalism, to invest exciting but quite insignificant occurrences with a spurious impressiveness they are altering the very character of our human interests. Far becomes near, and little becomes great, at the bidding of the newspaper article. Impressionism has taken tha place of the true iiterary instinct; the sensation of the moment has made life a matter of mere foreground. A vast number o€ people who have votes, and who therefore have are si share in the conduct of public affairs hardly ever lift their eyes to the great background of reality that calmly abides amid the rush and welter of momentary sensations. A second feature of the situation follows from the first. Interest awakened by momentary excitement fails to persist beyond the range of the incentive. There is thus a perpetual oscillation or transitoriness in the power of attention on any particular subject* Vividness and concentration are in inverse proportion. There is a third point which arises here, and which is clearly seen in our opening illustration. Once public attention is diverted from one subjject of interest to another it is ipractically impossible to bring it iback into its, temporarily forsaken channel. Once the thread is broken, it cannot be mended again. These restless and disturbing elements in tfae formation and concentration of public opinion have a very practical bearing on all questions of reform and progress. Formerly the problem of the reformer was how to awaken men from their constitutional aplathy and their local and personal preoccupations to the realisation of the great problems of life; to-day the problem is rather how to retain their interest for the time necessary for the consummation of some great measure of reform. There is still a deplorable amount of public apathy to combat, but the battle is by no means over when the public has been roused to h passing interest. The very next turn of the political or social kaleidoscope may entirely alter the centre of interest. Then the whole work has to be done ove'.again.