TT isn't in the mind. It is on the lips. The world just now is full of empty words. They roll out of its dead and flat. No one really listens to the words. The other fellow is possibly saying the same kind of words.
"The
"The people think this," says one man
"In my middle eines believes that," says another.. opinion, within the next twenty years we shall all a third have to accept communism or fuscism," says
The "people," the "proletariat," the middle class" and so forth and so forth
There is this flattening-so many of these big fint words and flat empty statements always being said. Where do we gel all of these words?
You take a trip, as-I dk just last fall, some six thousand miles in a enr; you visit many towns; you get a new sense of the huge- ness,
the richness and wonder of America. You come home to your home town and people stop you on the streci,
"In your opinion," they ask, "what are the Ameri can people thinknig?".
Do they expect un fa- telligent answer from you? I do not think so, but the question jars you a lie. There is the temptation to begin rolling out the empty words.
There must be some- thing in the air just now that accounts for this at- tempt to think big, to
group
thousands
and hum-
of thousands of dif- ferent people under
under single
Imaginary patterns,
There
must be something to ex- plain this attempt at un-
of understand-
-
deten more
often
ing-world affairs..
grant that there may pos- sibly be a few men, stu- affairs. dents of world
world travellers, men in government, who
Can
grasp these huge prob- lems that involve millions of different people. I don't know whether they can or not.
But it seems to me that the donger lies in the emp liness of so many words we use. We so persistently fail to realise the curious accidental quality of life.
It seems to me that marked mind-emptiness likely to come with the habitual
use of big mean- ingless words.
the
dunsses,' '
"farmer," the
the
class."
21
the
middle
All this may be
natural result of the
speeding up of all of our
channels of communieu-
tion. I cnn sit here, in this room, and, speaking into
a
"mike," address a millon, perhaps ten million, people
sitting in their homes. I can throw these big words nt them. It is increasingly dimeult to remember that these people, as addresse
addressed, are
not all one big mass, shades and complexity, that life is of infinite variety.
This laxity is surely something to fight against, lo struggle against. When such words as the "people." the "middle-class" the "masses" and the "proletariat," and so forth come to our lips we ought to stop. ought to ask ourselves, "Is there any such thing?"
IT is my own notion that, if we are to break it up, and begin to draw closer to one another again, begin to really think again, to cominunicate with one onother in a way that has real meaning, we shall have
We
Saturday,
HONGKONG TELEGRAPH
July 27, 1940,
to start off by trying to chuck these big meaningless
words. We shall have to begin consciously to think ******FAMOUS
small and stop trying to think big.
Ive this There in this street of houses in which I live: room in which I sit with friends, that women aver there, at a nearby table in a restaurant. How healthy. to begin thinking in terms of this limited world.
on.
What is the meaning of that frightened look that Hits over the face of that woman sitting over thero? There is a man gesticulating and talking to himself as he walks along. What is troubling him? The little
in rooms, human meetings of people on streets, Life, with its curious loneliness, has its warm moments. The biff thinkers call this approach to life an "escape. They blame you for trying to escape from the great, problems now shaking the world. In my opinion It is Insiend a go- Ing toward life. Of that
I am sure,
Some years ago, for a time, I гал two small weekly newspapers in an American town. Being a man whose name was a Htle "up" as an Amer!- can author, I am qulle sure that when I came then I there to the town, when bought the newspapers, the people of the town were afraid of me, as they bod a. sight to be. They thought I would be want- ing to change them, make the town into something new, control their think- ing. use them as puppets for my own purposes. How could I help knowing what they thought and fel!?
TO live at all in the town, I had to be very amall, not take myself too seriously, take the town
in which I was living as the centre of the universe. used to ride and wolk about frough the resi- dential streets of the town and on near-by country
wrote roads. I
n Jong article about a certain woman's flower garden. 1 wrote articles about coun- try roads that wound out
of town over low hills, about the everyday sights, sounds, smells, happen ings of the
town.
One day an old farmer came in to renew his sub- scription to the paper. He stood awkwardly about. There
he was something wanted to say but he had difcully In
saying it; Onally it came out he simply wanted to tell me that he hadn't known how olce was the road along which he had for years been driving into town
not until I had written of IL
This is what I mean. This is what I think we shali have to get back to. I mean the Intimacy of ilfe, is charms, its strangeness, its terrors, its acc!- dental qualities. These great thoughts about world affairs that we are trying to have nowadays are tend- Ing to separate us from one another in a curious way.
that isn't bigness at There is too much bigness all, fuo much using of big empty words. If the thing we call civilisation is to be saved, it will be saved not by the big-word throwers, so-called, but by what goes on in the average man's mind, in the minds of people In their houses in short, by a growing realisation of euch, other and of both the beauties and dificulties in the art of living with others.
AT
THE
"I'VE GOT SEVEN NOW"
IF I HAVE TWINS MY
KING'S
"DON'T LEAVE ME NOW - ... I'M FRIGHTENED/*
BRITISH REGIMENTS
THE BUFFS
A REGIMENT with four nick-
names, at least, has a particular claim to national ap- proval, and this is certainly true of The Buffe, (Royal East Kent Regiment).
This regiment dates back to 1872. when the citizens of London formed and equipped a force of 300 men to aid the Protestant cause in Holland. The men were recruited from the old Train Bonds, upon whom, for centuries, had fallen the task of de- tending London. On their return to England, in 1605, they were placed on the Army establishment with the title of 3rd Foot.
The men had to relinquish the buft, leather jackets which they had worn and take to the scarlet unl forms provided for them, but they were allowed to retain the bu colourings for their faélags, and thus become known as The Ruffs.
The Bulls also have two chicl nicknames. The first in "The Ad- miral's Regiment," due to the fact thai, in 1082, they served as Marines. The other is "The Resurrectionists". and there are two versions of the origin.
Jus
tlus
and
ond
One is said to be due to the fact that The Buffs cinimed to be as old as the Royal Scots, that renent with the nickname of
The Pilate's Bodyguard". version has it that The Buil werc given the nickname as a trib. fo their powers of recuperation after the regiment had been ridden down by the French lancers at Albutera.
The Buffs include in their battle honours such famous engagements as Blenheim, Ramillies, Oudenarde, Guadaloupe, 1759 Tulavera, Orthes, Peninsular, Sevestopol, Taku Forts, Chitral, and the Relief of Kimberley.
❤
In the Great War, men of the regiment fought at the Alsne, 1914, the and '17, Loos, Ypres. 1915 Somune, 1916 and 16, Arras, 1017, Amiens. the Hindenburg Line, Bagdad. Struma. Jerusalem, and They took a particularly active part in the "Big Push" of 1010.
The regimental badge shows the Red Dragon of the Royal House of Tudor. In each four corners of the badge are the united Red and White Rose, ensigned with an Imperial Crown, and the motto "Veteri Fron- descit Honore" ("May it flourish by Its ancient honour"). There is also a second regimental motto, that of the County of Kent. It is the single word "Invicta" ("Unconquered"),
Among the achievements of The Buffs is the fact that ano delack- ment was sent to America in the 1670's and there did much to lay the foundations of what is now the State of Virginia. It is also recorded that, in 1684, the Burghers of Bruges were so anxious to show their ap- preciation of the work of the re- ginent in defending their city that they made a gift to it of 600 barrels of Flemish beer. The Buffs have the privilege of marching through the City of London with fixed bayonets, beating drums and flying Colours.
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