GENERATING SETS! JOHNSON "CHORE-HORSE”
Dependable Electricity Anywhere.
For Lighting, Radio and Battery Charging.
12 volts... 300 watts-D.C.
ALSO
Combination Model: 6v.-200w.-D.C. or 110v.-300w.-A.C.
Other Models: 32 volts 500 watts & 800 watts.
Full Particulars From Sole Distributor:-
ALEX. ROSS MOTOR CO.
1A, Chater Road.
Phones. 20027 26730.
ENGINEERING
Leadership
GIVES IN ALL VAUXHALLS-
REMARKABLE ECONOMY (20% more m.p.g.)
INDEPENDENT SPRINGING (changes riding into gliding)
SYNCHROMESH
CONTROLLED (you can't help making a good change) NO DRAUGHt ventilatION (fresh air without shivers)
We will provide an adequate trial run on any Vauxhall model, and demonstrate its petrol economy
EAT AT
VAUXHALL
SEE & TRY THE 10 & 12 H.P.
HONGKONG HOTEL
GARAGE
Stubbs Rd.
Jimmy's Kitchen
INEXPENSIVE SATISFYING
Tel. 27778-0.
THE CHINA MAIL, OCTOBER 9, 1939
BAD LANGUAGE
ON
THE
A member of parliament has been asking Mr. Hore-Bellsha whether he is "aware of the immoderate, use of -foul language used by non-commis- sioned officers during instruction in certain Militia units."
It has always been a puzzle why the drill-sergeant should be allowed greater freedom of speech than other persons in positions of authority. The theory is, I suppose, that some people can be got to do their best work only if they are belaboured into obedience with bad language, says Robert Lynd in the "News Chronicle."
This theory was put forward some years ago by a builder's foreman in Hungary, where swearing had just been forbidden by law. Applying to the police for a licence "to pronounce oaths and curses" he declared that he was "unable
to get any work out of his men without using strong language."
If bad language is so effective a stimulous to work as this suggests, it seems to me that its use should be extended beyond the Army and the building trade,
Why, for example, should school- masters not adopt it as a means of encouraging their pupils to scale the heights of learning? Oaths might take the place of the birch as an instrument of education, and it might be made a part of the training of a teacher that he should learn to swear like a rum-maddened pirate.
IN CHURCH !
WANE
in-Chief of the United States ricet issued an order "that all command- ing officers take immediate steps to eradicate the undesirable habit of profane language."
A DECLINE
Bad language is waning, indeed even in England. There are bargees who declare that in the course of their work they haven't heard for year a word that would be out of place in a milk bar. In Billingsgate business is now carried on in language that wouldn't have brought a blush to the cheek of a Victorian school- mistress..
Commenting some time ago on the decline of bad language in the Anglo- Saxon world an American Professor of English declared that what was needed was "bigger and better swear words." "All the swear words now in use" he remarked gloomily, "are antiquated. Used rarely, and con- sequently with great effect by Chaucer, they have through frequent use in the last decade become in- cffective."
DOOMED
But the professor, I am afraid, has begun his campaign too. late. Bad language Vas doomed from the moment when writers took it up and Mr. Bernard Shaw, following the example of Mr. Lennox Robinson, popularised on the stage a word that a generation before would have filled polite ears with horror.
Then the novelists began to sprinkle If swearing is a promoter of virtue, their pages with bad language, and again, clergymen should surely be readers became so used to it that, see- encouraged to swear at their congre-ing it in print, they no longer felt the gations from the pulpit. Clergymen old thrill of the Victorian days when sometimes complain of the listlessness oaths were represented by blanks, and of churchgoers. There would be no villains all talked in blanks like "By listlessness among churchgoers, I G-" and "———you.” imagine, if the clergy began to tell
GURDLED. THE BLOOD them exactly what they thought of In those days. an oath had a scar- them in the most sanguinary language | city value. It curdled the blood of possible.
the young. But, after the War, swear- Suppose, for example, that a clergy- ¦ ing became so general that it was said man were to address his hearers even to have invaded the hockey field. with the same abusive exuberance as Whether bad language will ever en- Kipling's Ortheris addressing a batch tirely disappear, it is impossible to of new recruits. "Well," said Or- foretell. It seems likely enough to sur- theris, "you are a holy set of bean-vive, if the explanation which a doc- fed beggars, you are." "Squidgy, ham- tor- has suggested of the cause shanked beggars," he called them, swearing is the true one. "Swearing is and again, "bat's-eyed beggars" and very interesting psychologically," he "keb-'untin,' penny-toy, bootlace, said. "It is often due to shyness. You baggage-tout, 'orse-'oldin,' sandwich- will find that the man who is given to backed seweres."
persistent violent language is nearly always timid."
Is there any reason to believe that language of this kind - and Kipling has made it much milder than the language in real life would be less
effective in church than in the bar- rack-square as a means of bringing home to human beings a sense their imperfection?
PREJUDICE
of
There is, however, a wide-spread prejudice, reasonable or unreasonable, against the use of strong language. When I was in Toledo some years ago, there was, if I remember right, | a notice on the city gates: "Begging and blasphemy prohibited."
Swearing has been forbidden in Lithuania under a penalty of £33 or three months' imprisonment. It is said that the Lithuanians had some remarkable vituperative phrases which had reached them from Russia after having been translated from the
Chinese.
There has also been a campaign against swearing in Italy; and it is not many years since the Commander-
of
ex-
I had never thought of this planation before reading it, but--if, as I say, It is true-the best thing for a new recruit in the Militia to do, on hearing himself and his fellow-recruits assailed by a particularly lurid streum of language from the drill-sergeant, would be to say to him quietly: "There's no need to be so shy, sergeant. we're only a lot of boys. Don't be so
-scared of us.”*··
I wonder what the reply of the ser- geant would be.
Anyhow, I trust that Mr. Hore- Belisha will do all in his power to dis- courage shyness in non-commissioned officers.
If bargees and Billingsgate porters have ceased to be shy; why should not drill-sergeants be equally successful in over-coming their bashfulness?
After all, even for those who have ceased to be shy there are plenty of words left in the dictionary. I have no doubt the drill-sergeants will discover the pick of them.
By George McManus
Bringing Up Father
LEAVE
YES-MR. JIGGS-WHEN WE GET TO LONDON WE CAN OUR WIVES THERE-YOU AND I CAN CONTINUE ON TO AFRICA AND GO ON AN ELEPHANT HUNT-JOLLY SPORT- VERY EXCITING AND A BIT RISKY-
COLLECTING ELEPHANTS-
IS THAT YER HOBBY?
AND WE MAY RUN INTO A TIGER OR LEOPARD – 1 REMEMBER MY LAST TIME- WE ONLY LOST TWO OF OUR PARTY- THEY GOT A BIT CARELESS AND THE
LIONS GOT THEM-
Copr 1939, Kina Pesisiras Syndicate, Live, Wield right etserved
THAT WAS CARELESS-
DID
SIR
YES-TAKE OUT A FEW
OF MY DRESS SOFTS AN: PACK THIS IN ME· TRUNK INSTEAD=T
MAY WANT TO TAKE A STROLL IN AFRICA-