THE CHINA MAIL, JULY 8, 1940.
CHINA MAIL It's Five Times As Easy
WINDSOR HOUSE
CHANGE
We must say a word to- day about ourselves. The change-over from four to
To Read This Page
can be TOO, short.
Also, the sense of what you are in some other reading becomes "chopped up,'
and this is irrtating psychological-
Read a column papers.
You will find, if you watch ly. closely, that you read the first You like some meaning to attach six words of each line very quick- to every line you read, and, when ly, but slow down on the last two it is too short, you need a couple of lines before you gather what it
Besides the mechanical side, as or three.
it were, of using the eye muscles, there is a psychological point.
We think we can pay attention to something we are interested in for quite a long time, but, actual- ly, we can't give our closest atten- tion for more than a few seconds without a short pause for rest. Try learning a poem by heart.
With double columns this is is all about. even more noticeable,
ter
es-
Short enough to understand at point a glance and to avoid fatigue and
eye-strain.
So the art of choosing the right length for a line, the right width for a co- lumn, is a dif- ficult one.
five columns introduced A newspaper is printed in co- Unless you turn your head as world to learn about six consecu- with this issue, the first lumns, partly for mechanical rea- you read, which most people don't; tive words, but much more diffi- The eyes have to move so quick- ly, backwards and forwards, that sons of typesetting, but much more the eye muscles have to do, a long cult to learn nine.
That six or seven words is about they are almost oscillating, and from our new premises in importantly because it is far easier continuous contraction from one
side to the other, in reading a line the limit to which we can really the constant change of direction Windsor House, is suf- to read that way,
the width of this page.
pay attention at once.
becomes very tiring. ficiently striking in itself If you had to read continuously
Reading a line the width of a and it cannot be necessary very heavy going, and would column involves
across the page, you would find it
a much shorter to draw to it the special throw the paper aside before you contraction each journey, so that further than the the muscles do not have to be used attention of our readers, headlines.
had got much
all out every time. except perhaps from the
tend to In reading your eyes viewpoint expressed else-travel showly from left to right, in where on this page by Dr.ja series of little jerks, one for each word, and then to come back with Beaumont.
ja flick to the beginning of the next For the record, how.line.
That slow journey to the right ever, it might be as well is tiring.
It means you have to concen- to anticipate our numer-
trate all the time, and there is no ous local humorists and relief till the flick comes the other gently to disclaim any in- way. ference from our going: over to five columns that it call be associated with Fifth Column activity! Nor can we lay claim, in fairness, to any special originality. The "China Mail" in making the change is but following in the footsteps of the lead- ing London dailies. In! recent weeks, the "Daily Mail, "Daily Herald,'
It is the simplest thing in the
DON'T RUSH
INTO A CRISIS MARRIAGE
"Don't marry just because he's
.
as if I were
are
Now, there is another about a narrow column.
Rapid, easy reading is sentially a mat- of practice a n d develop- ment.
When you first learn read as a child, you spell out la- boriously each word.
tó
Later you de- velop the habit of seeing the whole word without need-
DR. IVOR BEAUMONT
tells you why your eyes
are going to like read- ing the "China Mail" in future.
ing to consider "000000 the separate
letters.
Later again, you tend to groups of words.
But we think we can now claim to have a column. width that is ideal for easy reading.
Long enough to avoid jerki- ness, and to en- able you to get sense t each line,
0004 the
The couple of paragraphs which see. immediately follow are really too
narrow for comfort.
Now, it is obvious that, in a Actually, the six seven words vre narrow column such as you are now have in a line represent the now reading, with only about six ideal length which can be read. words to a line, it is possible for with the minimum of fatigue, all a question of how much you the reader to see the whole-line They allow. the eye to travel
prepared to pay for
the and understand the whole line at rapidly down the column, and to amusement or the emotion of to-
one glance..
get ALL the news, quickly and day. For, when you say: "I must give him something to re- member... "it is ten to one your own dramatic feelings that you are enjoying. How much are you really thinking of him?
("They were made for each other," say the simple-minded, or, more often, the intensely senti- mental. "They married for the best reason of all — because they could not help it.")
But, on the other hand, a line easily.
Rosita Forbes,
the famous
novelist and woman explorer, advises
LOOK BEFORE
reticence before health
YOU LEAP
"Daily Telegraph, "News- going to the front," I said firmly, The fifteen-year-younger-than-I Chronicle" and most of wage-earner looked the Sunday newspapers very much out of date, have adopted the narrow- "Aren't you thinking of the last er column and are now war?" she asked coldly. published with eight co- Common sense and sentiment lumns to the page.
The seem to be waging a more effec
tive lightning, war than Hitler, tabloids, "Daily Mirror," Engaged couples are getting mar- "Daily Sketch," "Evening ried quick as they can make it, That's all right. They'd done their Standard," "Sunday Pic thinking way back before the war torial" had led the way by started.
Think again. When you can't help doing a thing, it is because changing from four to But there's another kind of you have lost all sense of reason five columns format as couple who aren't think at all, and all self-control. In fact you They're just feeling. generally can't think at all. Would that be early as the beginning of too much.
a good reason for entering into a the year.
business partnership on which the
or any fortable, companionable and sen- It's natural enough with whole of your future prosperity other form of godliness, we don't sible, but a good solid background It is a fact of historical bombers in the air,
black would depend? No. Of course not. really face facts. We still hesitate of habits, tastes and ideas in com- outs below. But do con- And it is the worst possible rea- to acknowledge the existence of mon. Marriage, to my mind, is interest, however, that we sider whether it is an incident son for marriage.
passion as an inevitable sensa- infernally difficult, far more dif- have now completed aor an event. That means, will it matter as much to you next year,
"Love at first sight," generally tion, part of a woman's life as ficult than any other form of part- cycle of change.
or in ten years? When the war's means you want a particular, man much as of a man's.
nership. Its intimacy makes en- When the "China Mail" over, will you wonder why you beyond reason and at all costs. In
handicapped yourself with a rela- war-time you are apt to want him It would really be much better rmous and often illogical de- was first published in tonship that makes no kind of more than ever, because you sud- to confess, when you are swept on mands. Wives quite often February, 1845, it appear-ense
denly realise that time may be
to be ordinarily pleasing women limited. But it does not mean that your feet and out of your senses ed with a five-column Do some simple arithmetic you will go on wanting him, or by a tide of physical feeling, that with all sorts of senses, including It's even be willing to put up with him this has nothing whatsoever to do common sense and а sense of page. In process of time, before you let yourself go.
when passion-has disappeared
with love. It is as natural as any humour. The same applies in harmony with new public demands and new ficult problem of selection.
other appetite and as inevitable. husbands, methods of production, Then the editorial
This is stark and sensible
Marital familiarity is a terrible was like the paper went first to six partment
truth. With the freedom of form of limelight. It shows up opportunity which exists to- unexpected flaws. To endure it, columns and then to pump, now it functions difficult to-day. This is due first-
day this sort of "falling in both partners need a great deal of seven, and then, on the re-more like a shoe-horn. ly, I suppose; to Hitler-then to
which the:
understanding and tolerance. Victorians competition, "International panic,
These are qualities which have volutionary change three Those were spacious days nerve-strain, and the fact that the ignored unless they could pre- years ago to tabloid size when an hour either way bodies of our generation have not
tened it was a heedless ro- nothing to do with passion. You yet. become accustomed to the pace to four columns.
made no difference; now and tension of modern life. There
'mance to be fulfilled, figurative- really can't make a success of any marriage when ly speaking, upon the altar steps, job-least of all Today, with many im the anxious eye has to is no security about life, fortune
or a job to-day. There is, of cour does not happen to you once. you're in a hurricane of senseless keep close watch on the portant differences, we
amusement evenin se, more
feeling. war-time than there used to be fleeting minutes.
Unless you are tired, ill, over- 50 years ago for the general pub- worked, burdened with "too many find ourselves back where Those fleeting minutes lic, as well as more change and responsibilities, or oppressed by as I can what you have to expect. we began in the earliest account, in large mea- movement. But, because nobody lack of the ordinary opportunities If you are made, not of sugar and years of the Colony. Chief
really knows what is going to hap- sure, for those faults in pen to-morrow or next year, life is for meeting young mer or indeed of the changes brought by production, which may be much more, complicated for us men of any age, it will happen to spice and all things nice" like
Let us, for once, talk frankly, The actual machinery of existence de-by which I mean earning en-
a ough to keep one in a satisfactory and intelligent way—is immensely
than it was for our
parents
ΟΙ
! love"
4
cease
to
There! I have told you as well
་་་
you, naturally and inevitably, story-book little girls, but of flesh the long passage of years detected, in this issue. grandparents.-..
several times during your life. and blood, sentiment and desire, is, undoubtedly on the The transfer of an entire
you will most certainly feel, once Ten to one, it will have nothing or several times in your life, that mechanical side, but
Indeed, we are so afraid of to do with love, you will want of vermes vieing for first place, a hours in a manner that printing plant in 24
the whole thing slipping out of a certain man for no logical reason nothing matters except the posses- our grasp, before we have made at all. You may not even like sion of the man who attracts you. very close second, is the will not interfere with the
the most of it, that we rush him particularly. Because of "I can't give him up!" How often blindly after whatever is agree circumstances or surroundings, news itself.
normal publication is no Where but few words light task, and some dis- reached the Colony by organisation must be re- cable in the early years garded as unavoidable and the daily puzzle was We make no apologies, how to fill the paper, therefore, confident that thousands of words now our readers will bear with arrive from all parts of us until our plans the world every 24 hours aspirations are fully presenting the more dif- veloped.
able or exciting, without giving because of some physical affinity, have you heard that said by a girl a thought to the future. We fall or simply because you are strong or a woman, who, a few months in love and out of love, we "fall and young and temperamental. It later, would do "most anything" for" a man or a fashion, a is quite natural. It has happened in the world to be free? phrase, a habit, or a new point to most women. But it is NOT ir- of view, with equal rapidity resistible and it is NOT love. We feel a lot of emotion and never seriously consider what it
13.
I don't think we are particularly and happy, because, although we pride de- ourselves on taking sex sensibly,
and on all the progress we have made since the last generation put
What-I find much more difficult
is to suggest any logical course of When you "can't help yourself," action to take the place of marri- don't think of marriage. For in age, I should say "the best thing marriage you've got to help your to do is to run away! At a dis- self every moment of the day and tance, one can generally think help a man as well.
more clearly. Passion does not last. If you have enougi: strength Marriage needs not only a love of character to run away and stay. which is spiritual and mental, com- away, you are certain or BAOUIR,