THE CHINA MAIL, "AUGUST 3, 1940
CHINA MAIL
WINDSOR HOUSE
BRITAIN "LISTENS IN"
Among radio-speakers who talk in English at re- from gular intervals
abroad the best-known to British listeners are Mr. Raymond Gram Swing, and a person known as Lord Haw Haw whose words are sent out from Hamburg and Bremen. Strange that men so dia- metrically opposite as these two should be the! favourites in Britain. But perhaps "favourite" as ap- plied to the second of them is not the word.
No one likes Lord Haw Haw. We do not believe him, but we listen. Partly it is from sheer curiosity, and partly because it is informative to know the very worst construction! that can be put on one's own actions. If this is what Germany says and thinks-well, it is better to know.
MECHANISED MOLOCH
(Copyright in All Countries.)
The Briton switches off and turns to Mr. Swing. "America speaking." The Briton has little expecta- tion that the United States will depart from the isolationist attitude, though we hope that it may be favourable to the Allies within the limits it
Between the ordinary has set itself. We are!
The idea of prevision is thus ex- events. In times of great an-bonds of sense-perception. Others
Gunn's optical vision and such predictive learning to take an inter-
might say that the dream-world pressed by one of Mr. est in the Presidential xiety and distress not so often non-sensical as to be characters, drawing on and sim-power there lies a half-way house of what may be called heightened for any plifying the work of Dunne:
There are years of campaign, though doubt-only do omens and sup- wholly untrustworthy
In the four-dimensional world perception. less to many Britons the erstitions win increased guidance or information which it
may seem, by flashes, to convey. you should be able to look along young discovery and rapture, not the belief in Certainly for every dream that the dimension of time just as we unconnected with first love, and details of the electoral regard:
baffling. vision and prediction is comes true (and is therefore much can look along the dimension of there are moments and days and
there talked about) procedure are
be a straight line. If I put my finger months in later And there are Britons to also widened and streng-dozens which are false prophecy there on the edge of the white really does seem to own new eyes That illusions or mere gibberish and are there-cloth and call the spot. Now, I can and to discover new and glorious whom news of week-to-thened.
fore dismissed in silence. Mean- see not only the past part of the significance in familiar things. As my finger another of Mr. Gunn's characters week happenings in the and phantasms may be while some believers in "second Une extending up to
In the same way a per-| Colour glows. Flowers, trees, United States is more wel-born of fright and care is sight" say that their glimpse of but the future part extending be- exquisitely puts it:
son in the fourth-dimensional the surface of our earth are seen called new eyes. come now than ever be- obviously true, but there things to come may arrive at any yond it.
world could not only see the past with what is fore because it brings be- are a growing number of
on our line of time up to Now Over all is a lovely light. but also the future beyond it. mind is transported: Beauty be- fore us the life of a civilis-people who while claim-
Now this surely involves: the comes so heightened that the frail, ed nation that is not, as ing to be as rational as
conception of a rigidly determined newly awakened spirit can hardly future which cannot be affected bear it: in fact, cannot bear it at we are, immersed in war anybody else, yet assert,
by human intervention. If Atimes, and breaks down in tears, and thoughts of war.
Some Ways Of Seeing Things
must
By Ivor Brown
life when
one
The
ROADS OF ADVENTURE you may choose to call it. the first, elementary, and normal jected by the Fourth Dimen- experience acquires
sideration for humanity, wants to
means of
·
Absurdi
horrors of war.
Total-Mystic me
the possibility of super-waking moment. As you walk accurately foresees his death to tears neither of joy nor of sorrow, sensuous perception, "sec-along the street, you may see the morrow in a railway accident, that yet seem to perform a my- There is how can he avert it by staying at sterious cleansing or purifying [ond: sight,” or whatever events of to-morrow.
no need of a dream to pass from home? But this determinism is re- aut. The person undergoing this a new con- The argument might run that kind of sight to the second, more sionists, who claim that
The mathematics of the situa-do little acts of kindness, wants Traveling in Great Brit-the intuitive powers of the mystic subtle, and most strange.
depend for their effectiveness upon Generally, but not inevitably, tion, taking the serial, multi-all the world to be happy, to be. rid of struggle ain is rapidly taking on a certain initial victory over mat- such usage of second sight is ex-dimensional view into account, at peace, to be
ter. This may take the form of plained as an escape from the would appear to permit of inter-and wrangling and the diabolic aspects of an adventure.Į starving the senses by self-denial three-dimensional world into one ference with foreseen events. With the removal of sign-and of strengthening the mind by which is not similarly condition- posts, it is no longer easy exercises in prolonged, profound, ed by notions of time and space. and solitary concentration, The The mind, we are told, is some- for the motorist to find former has been most typical of how enabled to rise above and
Poets and artists of all kinds The only response of the aver-lare much in this state, Wordsworth of it, his way. No longer is the Christian mysticism and the lat- beyond the ordinary traveler tempted to mur-practice is
and space remain in ล a separate one: time
Many of us never have it. mur "impossible" when he obviously they are interdependent strangely distorted form) and so "mathematics of the situation" and life.
the tyranny of a surmise that the Fourth Dimen-But those who do know it are to some degree. Great suffering, to escape from is confronted at a York-such as that imposed by war, is a Here and Now. The issue has sionists may not be so much wiser privileged and thankful beyond
power to explain. shire cross-roads with. the form of compulsory self-denial, been translated into terms of the themselves.
Plainly a single article can but If this be not the true "second injunction,
and concentration of mind upon theatre by Mr. Priestley more than "Jump;
the odious thing is also inevitable once, and, has again been ad- hint at some aspects of this enor-sight" of the total mystic; if it miles." Nor does he wince in war-time. So some; at least of mirably related in-a-fascinating mous subject: It can deeply pene-involves bath less torment and at the sign pointing the the conditions of mystical ex-novel of the Highlands called trate none of them. Even were the less rapture than came to an Emily perience or second sight are "Second Sight," by Mr. Neil Gunn, mind able, the hand is constrained Bronte in her capture and loss of for more than ever. in war-time the Unseen, still it is a most.pre- way to the Ugley Men and greatly multiplied by the com- Unconscious Mysticism must writers acknowledge the clous possession. Not so abnormal. Women's Institute. Even mon anguish of our days. There
realities of space and time. Cer-,or miraculous as to be frighten- is, morcover, a widespread read!- shop signs that indicate ness for unusual experience and
The subject is particularly well tainly I would not-claim-to-com-ing, it yet confers upon common of ever- mathematics. of clay "bright shoots adapted to the Highland setting,prehend the the names of places area stimulated will to believe.
not only because Mr. Gunn can "serialism." But public interest in lastingness." The appetite for being removed:
write with such skill about the such matters. is obviously grow-living grows: boredom becomes
The senses. are In Dreams
ardours and endurances of the ing, while there is increasing impossible. Thus the motorist,
scientific dog-created and refashioned. The art deer forest but because the High-scopticism of the pampered too long per this experience, carrying: with it tion for "scoing things." That new idea (or fancy, if you prefer fully, with
There are some who say that landers have an especial reputa-matism. which would dismiss any of seeing things is practised more new keenness, · and haps by automobile-asso-gifts of prevision, is most Ukely they might have unusual and my-to call It so) with a brief grunt of with a finer sense of Nature's in- After all, the ciation route maps, road to be encountered in dreams, when stical experience is, by our pre- "Absurd! Preposterous!" Appalled tricate relations.
our subconscious mind is work-vious argument, not unnatural, by, the powers of mechanical in-complete second-sighters do have patrols, and signposts, in freedom from the ordinary For they have struggled for livel-vention, we more and more regard a sad time of it. In Mr. Gunn's takes a leap back into the
hood on too bare a land to be our world as one in which any-book, as in banshee yarns, it is
has thing can happen, and even apply mainly the dark and lethal. mat---- conditions of an exciting ing the deep comfort to be self-indulgent: Necessity
starved their material desires, to the powers of the mind, the ters they descry. One might pray past, and often enough got from Stevenson's re- while surroundings of lonely devastating mutability and un-rather for the intermediary of in- does not know where he is mark that "To travel beauty may have unconsciously canny progress of workshop and creased vision the gift, as it were, of the one-and-a-half, sighter, the going, nor when he has hopefully is better than heightened their awareness of Im-laboratory technique.
material forces. One. says “un- We may, however, skip the function of the poet's eye. Thus got there. More and more, to arrive." For the one is consciously because, as Mr. Gunn deeper metaphysical and mathe-to see things" seems to offer less writes a Londoner, the now much easier to do points out, they rarely consider matical complications Involved in darkness, and fewer dangers and or allude to the loveliness of their this inatter of a fourth dimension has its own deep treasury of de- British motorist is realis-'than the other.....
Ilandscape..
[and the precise:: foretelling of lights
ter of the Yoga 'regimen. Neither perception (in dreams, of course; age man will be a confession that must have had ten years
he does not understand the Shelley almost all his sentient
re-
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