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MY VISIT TO RUSSIA.
AN IMPRESSION OF MOSCOW/
BT BOCERT BOOTHEY, M.P.]
UGLY SLANG.
WHY SHOULD - WE APE THE UNITED STATES 1
UNINTELLIGENT SLOVENLINESS.
-FRY-TOIT-BLUNT-J
[Mr. Robert Boothby, the Unionist tember for East Aberdeenshire, viatted Russia with three other Ualonist M.P.s. They spent part of April and I can understand the creation and use May, 1826, in Moscow, and afterwards of slang in the United States, where Mr. Boothby, Sir Frank Nelson and there is a mixed nation that cares Colonel T. CR Moore published nothing about the tradition and growth atatement recording their impressions of the English language and is anxions which attracted a good deal of atten- to express its new individuality in its tion. Mr. Boothby has written for us own way, but I really cantet under- three articles going into certain mat-stand why English people should be so ters with more detail than was then ready to absorb American-alang and possible]
even to invent horrible slaag words of their own."
By what standards are we to judge the Moscow of to-day? The standard of pre- In a recent lawsuit one of the wit- War Moscow? The standard of a western nesses, recalling a conversation, made European capitali 'It is really impos-nse of the words.up to him" and sible to say. Allowance must be made for proposition," whereupon the Lord the havoc wrought by war, famine, Chief Justice remarked: "That is the pestilence and revolution. Also for the new language; I hope he understood it." fact that Moscow is to-day (if it has nột I have no doubt he did, for many peo- always been) an Oriental city. But when ple seem to understand alang better than all is said and done the people do not en- English, but it is really deplorable that joy a degree of comfort, standard of people should want to debase their own life, which we in this country would cop-language. in such a manner. If there is sider tolerable. Moscow is clearly-better- ticher, a subtler language than English, off to-day than two years ago. But it is I hare yet to be told 'bf it, but if one no advertisement for Communism.
listens to an average conversation one is The first glimpse of the crowded streets just as likely an not to hear very little of strange people jostling each other true English. in their efforts to avoid annihilation by motor-cars which dashed along at a pace Ordinary talk is becoming terribly calculated to turn the most intrepid mongrelised, and people seem to imagine Parisian taxi driver green with envy, to that there is something excessively clever the accompaniment of ear-splitting hoots, in using all sorts of alang-words and exceeding in pungency and horror any-expressions. But, as a matter of fact, thing the Italians can produce-was ex- it is not "clever at all; rather is it à citing. Everywhere the Tartar type pre-sign of lack of imagination and of dense dominated, and the quaint and varying | ignorance. Now and then, it is true, a headgear which surmounted their flat slang phrase has an apt vividness, but Mongolian features added to the strange people who use slang habitually lose all ness of the stene. Luxurious taxis sense of proportion and turn the English for foreigners, uncomfortable taxis for language into a nightmare of ugliness. Bolshevik officials, filthy droshkies driven and fatuity. by filthy old men, peasant carta carrying their produca to market, with here and there the Rolls-Royce of a Commissar-of such is the traffic,
RICH SHOPS.
There are shops rather rich shops- but nobody ever seems to buy anything in them. Perhaps they are just for show, The petty trading is done chiefly in the bazaars, which resemble those of any other Oriental town, and by means of street peddling. To drive in a droshky is an agony".
To drive in an ordinary taxi is little better. For the paving of the streets is abominable and the risk of
MONGHELISED TALK.
If the Americans want to build up a language of their own, let them; but can't we be content with the language which has given us the greatest literature in the world and is as much part of England as the very soil?
SPURIOUS SMARTNESS. The constant use of Elang is a form of unintelligent alovenliness that ought to be eradicated. It not merely poisons English speech, but I believe that it also cheapens thought. The spurious smart- ness of the slang repartee, which is so common, is degrading to the intelligence and, leads to the vulgarisation of ideas.
death by capsizing or by collision is de thoughts or beautiful fancies to be given Indeed, how could one expect noble finitely too high. Little electric trams out in slang! I have never discovered ran about and are always packed, but the word "stant in Shakespeare, nor they have an unfortunate habit of have I ever heard that Shelley called hartling downhill and staggering up, so anybody an "old bean" in & poem. that the wary traveller will probably Daily fail. come to the conclusion that it is both safest and cheapest to commit his or her body to one of the six hundred Leyland; buses, if it is essential to commit it to something. These buses give one a thrill of national pride. They are 60 com petent and British and, sailing majesti- cally through the turmoil, contrive to assume an air of conscious superiority.
The Kremlin, to anyone who sees it for the first time, is impressive. Under the present régime it is almost over whelming for the Bolshevists know how to get their effects. We saw it first at dusk, when the famous wall which sur rounds it assumes gigantic proportions. Behind, the spires of a hundred churches were faintly discernible in the twilight. In front, the sentries. And surmounting all, illuminated by electric light there hung listlessly a red flag-the symbol of power in Russia to-day.
the answer to it may well be fraught with danger.
With the exception of a few. zagrant children pathetic little figures huddled together on the pavement there were no visible signs of destitution or of starva tion." Some of the housing conditions survivors of the ancien régime. But were deplorable, especially amongst the against this must be put the comparative cleanliness of the streets, and the total absence of disorder. It is possible to walk about Moscow at all hours of the night in perfect safety
THE PEOPLE. nothing of them. After all these years And the people): One could make they might have been expected to take some interest in foreigners to stare, per- haps to laugh af us as we passed. On A few days later we were taken round displayed no curiosity whatsoever.
the contrary, they were courteous, but Be- the Kremlin, and stood upon a terrace neath their mask-like countenances it overlooking the river, winding its way through the city and beyond. Moscow Only there was an inward"brooding look was impossible to detect any emotions. Jay at our feet, and over Moscow a haze in their eyes. Of what were they think. shimmered in the afternoon sun. A belling Obviously they were sad but then rang out; then another; and suddenly the they have always been sad. Were they whole air seemed to be filled with the desperately unhappy? Did they loathe, sound of many bella merging themselves tolerate, or approve of the system under into a single vibrant note. The scene which they lived! Probably they did not was memorable, and the city resembled know, and would have answered if ques Fez in the poignancy of its beautytioned, "It is inevitable. It is no great In front of the Kremlin stands the matter (nichero)." Even the prisoners shrine of Lenin, in which the body of the we sometimes saw being marched through Dictator lies embalmed. At certain times the streets by armed guards of that non- the crowd passes through to pay homage strous-G.PU, seemed hardly concerned to the creator of Russian Communiam Only in the opera house-or the concert Within a few hundred yards, at the en- hall did one catch a glimpse of the soul france to Red Square, there is another of the people. There the audiences listen- shrine, the shrine of the Iberian Virgin. ed to music with a kind of savage Here candles burn day and night, and intensity. here also many persons may be seen on One evening at the opera they were their knees crossing themselves. Redoing Prince Igor; a lot of funny little ligion is the opiate of the people, ac Frenchmen, a Communist delegation of cording to the Soviet authorities, who some sort or another, began to chatter have placarded the city with this and towards the end of the first act. They similar information. But the campaign were not hissed. But the audience con- against Christianity has failed. The contrated upon them a kind of dull, re priests may have been killed. The sentful, hostility, appalling in its silent churches remain. Once more the choirs force. They chattered no more. Another sing, the candles are lit, the devout pray night, the Moscow symphony orches Religion, the Bolshevists have found is tragave a Scriabin concert in the a force to be reckoned with.
conservatorium. A grave young man MILITARY REVIEW.SAA called Sofranilsky played the concerto On May Day they held a great military for piano and orchestra with a restrain. review in Red Square. Bands played ed passion and power that was im- and the red flaga waved as." Budenys"pressive. But during the Poème de cavalry clattered past the Lenin shrine Extase, which was superbly played, the where stood Voroshilov, the Commander audience was simply transported, and in-Chief, and Stalin the man of the sense of rhythm, surging through the 'to-day,'' pale and sombre Overhead the ball, became almost intoxicating“. It aeroplanes roared, and one, wondered would be true to say that in Russia mund what the effect of it all would have been is the opiate of the people. Listening on some of our Labour pacifists. How to it, they forget politics, anxieties, fears. ever, none was there only four Tories For the time, nothing else matters. and a Liberal. Some 15,000 troops took One thing they have accomplished, and part, and there was a crowd (ruthlessly that is the sweeping away of claas die controlled by military police) of about tinctions, as we understand them. True the same number. At the conclusion of there is a sort of bureaucratic bour- the review began the Grand March Fast revizie composed of Government officials. of the Be-bannered Comrades, which con. But no classes. Only thousand types. tinued, without a moment's cessation, all And a thousand contradictions which day, amidst great shouting and a pro-render any sweeping judgments on Mos longed,. discordant wails-from- micro- cow, or indeed on Russia, quite ludicrous, phones dotted all over the town. All opinions are open to the fiercest How many of the comrades took part criticism and practically none can apply in this wearisome affair of their own, free to the situation as a whole. I remember will no one could say. Some of them one evening, going for a long walk out- looked bored to distraction. But the aide the city. The setting sun lit up and children, at least: seemed to be enjoying burnished the domes of the churches themselves, and most of them looked re- From's thousand mastheads the red fizy markably fit. What is going to be the few. And for every flag there glittered effect of a Communist education upon a challenging golden crucifix. A strange these children when they grow up 1 That contradiction, and significant of the is one of the riddles of the future, and Russia of to-day-The Spectator.
1928
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