FOUR YEARS OF "LISTENERS"

New Zealand Listener, Volume 14, Issue 341, 4 January 1946, Page 6

FOUR YEARS OF "LISTENERS"

W* are not so smug as to accept this tribute or so sanctimonious as to pretend not to like it. Part of it may, however, be true; all of it is spontaneous; and the author is an occasional contributor who has no special cause to be grateful to us.

IVING in the country one acib cumulates things. In four years we got together all sorts of lumber: a couple of extra children, piles of shoes and beer bottles, and at least three more packing-cases of books. I always pack the books first. This time I was faced with another problem. During the war years I got into the habit of putting aside newspapers or magazines with any particularly interesting piece of information. I stuck them on top of a cupboard in the boys’ room and by the time we left they reached the ceiling. It is one of the disadvantages of living in historic times. Anyway they caused a bit of excitement on the final day, for we had the open fire going all day, and as there was plenty of paper to burn as well as clothes and we had only a tin chimney in an old ramshackle house built about 1870, the whole place caught alight. The fire brigade came and put it out. Of course all the village turned out too, but they didn’t get much of a run for their money. I felt rather sorry for the next tenant. It was such a bad house that he would have been much better off in a tent. But the papers that were stich hot stuff were not all New Zealand Listeners. As a matter of fact I had four years of them put away, and when it came to burning them I was surprised to find how much I wanted to keep. So I sat up several evenings going through them, tearing out all the articles I wanted. And finally I filed a whole series of articles in folders under appropriate headings, such as Social, Educational, Scientific, Geographical, Music, Biography, Books and Criticism, Films and Drama, Art, etc, Pungent and Permanent : We are so used to the ephemeral news that we no longer seek permanent values in anything costing twopence or threepence. We buy, glance at, and burn. But reminiscence is good for the soul and revaluation for the pocket. Readers of The Listener may like to be reminded of some of the things they have had served up to them so faithfully over the last few years. There have been articles which were pungent and to the point which have retained their interest; interviews, book reviews, film reviews, etc., which were memorable and remain valuable. I don’t intend to criticise or evaluate, but merely to remind... . Perhaps it will suggest to others the keeping of a file for clippings in 1946. Social and Educational Some of the articles I didn’t burn were "The Spirit of England," "UNRRA, CORSO-and YOU," "Socialism Without Bureaucrats," "What is a Community Centre?", "I Discover Wireless — in Prison," "Power as the Instrument of Justice," "Help if we ask for it," "Do 1

need to be idle .. .?" There were lots more, of course: I have chosen at random, and mainly from this year. There is one interesting thing one notices about The Listener when looking through a series of articles. It is that there is often a question mark at the end of a statement. "Training Society to Think" is the riame of one article. It seems to be the aim of the whole staff, an aim delightfully sugar-coated. By the' way, unless you are a regular reader of the best overseas papers, where did you first get your ideas about UNRRA, etc.? Who first clarified in your mind the population problem of the Western World? the Jewish question? erosion? rehabilitation? in New Zealand made clear what they are © trying to do in Invercargill about licensing? in Feilding about Adult Education? or in schools about accrediting? In the country The Listener is the main educational organ; the radio itself takes second place to it, In schools it is a textbook one can pass examinations on. ; Biography Up-to-Date The Listener can always tell us who is who while he still is somebody; and the editor can write an obituary that remains in one’s mind. Enemies receive fair play and friends sympathy without sentimentality. Do you remember those vivid portraits of Roosevelt and Dewey, of Freyberg and his Division, of Hitler and Mussolini and Churchill and Attlee. The heat of the moment never goes to The Listener’s head. Looking back through my files I am surprised in spite of myself to find it always calm, detached but not unmoved, critical but not carping, inquisitive but not nasty, Editorials The editorials have been praised by J. C. Beaglehole as models of good prose. Do you recall "Tears but No Blood" ("Democracy enables us to change our rulers without cutting off their heads. . . +"); "Victory in Europe" ("We must save ourselves, and salvation is by works as well as by faith."); "Radio Serials" ("It is one thing to send children to bed to make sure that they get rest and sleep, and another thing altogether to say that if they stay up and listen to the things their parents are listening. to they will be started on the road to

ruin.") "Artists and Critics"? ("But the critic -has his duty too. He must say what he thinks true when it is for the good of society that he should speak at all. . . ."); "Soldiers Into Civilians" ("Though it is not true any longer that when a war has been won the men who won it are forgotten, it is true that men go to war on a high wave vf patriotism and return on a lower wave. ..-"); "Horror with Some Hope" ("The atomic bomb will have sickened many people and given others a faint gleam of hope. We join the band of hope .. .")?

Book Reviews G.M. in the film line has brought out his own book, and can speak for himself, He does it very well. But over the years The Listener has been quietly probing the New Zealand scene, seeking thé New Zealand novel, telling us about New Zealand verse, dropping pertinent comments on pertinent books by educationists and philosophers. Through The Listener tens of thousands of New Zealanders have heard for the first time of Holcroft, McCormick, Combs, Beaglehole, Fairburn, Somerset, Mulgan, Sargeson, Isobel Andrews, and others who in effect are creating the New Zealand scene, providing our mental climate. It (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) has been a forum for debate for our best brains. I am glad to have the minutes thrown in for threepence. I am glad I kept them. They are hot stuff, and my fire was hot enough without them.

People Who Come and Go Curnow wrote a couple of lines some years ago about important people who come to this country. As I recall them: " ... . foreign visitors are neverthe-. less polite; they arrive in the morning, and leave at night," Most of us have no chance of seeing visitors of that kind, and probably don’t want to. But there is the visitor who has something to contribute; the kind of visitor who can tell us about things, or play or sing for us, In the ordinary way we would lose him in the day’s news, but The Listener gives us a regular eavesdropping service! So skimming through my file I find a personal interview with Mrs. Roosevelt, making her human and friendly because a human and friendly person interviewéd her. Whoever it was was a New Zealander interested in people, interested in distinguished people because distinction doesn’t spring from accident, but not overawed by it or by anyone, and least of all by eanyone as friendly and as charming as Mrs. Roosevelt. And interviews with Noel Coward, Friedman, Edith Somerskill, Goodman, Malcolm Sargent, Sir Angus Gillan were the same. The Listener’s interviews were conversations in passing with almost everyone who had something to say. They brought one nearer, broke down an isolation, kept one in touch in a way no daily can do, and no other periodical in New Zealand attempts to do. }

And The Listener has kept us informed about what people in England and elsewhere have been saying. The war news was curbed by circumstance. The peace news in the Victory Number is still the best summary issued in this country, The articles on other countries, on Germany, Russia, China, and the United States especially, have had a sanity often lacking in the daily press. If there has been any "line" or bias, it has been for tolerance, for national and international understanding, for caution in criticism, for firmness but kindness in action. We could be proud to have The Listener cited overseas as representative of New Zealand Public Opinion. Exploring New Zealand

Perhaps The Listener hasn’t sent enough people out looking for New Zealand. Some of the best articles are a record of looking and finding in nooks and byways, in town and country; but especially the country. A land needs to be loved, and to be loved it must be understood. This land of ours needs interpreters. The Listener has always understood that need, but could make more of it yet. "Who Longs to Go Back to the Country?" was one article. which pleased me very much, perhaps because it struck responsive chords. But the best article of all was "Back in My Tracks," on the return of a native to Otago after many years of absence. Do you remember it? And do you remember the vivid illustrations by Russell Clark? I have always felt that we readers were lucky to have Clark at our dis. posal. Now that his official army tour

of the Pacific is cleared up, he might do a civilian tour of New Zealand on our and your behalf. What about it? Perhaps he could call at the schools as he went, to draw our children and show our children art. Hard to Conclude I find I haven’t even done what I set out to do. As I write I am turning over the pages of my files, and every page has a new topic and a new interest, I am glad they. didn’t go up in smoke. Thank you, Listener. You have given us much food for thought, much pro. vocative argument, much sound sense. You have kept us interested. You have made us smile. You have worn much better than we had a right to expect. You have been a singularly good three-

pence worth.

ENTHUSIAST