Pebbles on the shore [by] Alpha of the plough

by A. G. Gardiner

"Did you want him to hold a Cabinet Council over the dinner-table?" I asked. The strenuous person killed me with a look of scorn.

But all the same, so far from being shocked to learn that Mr. Asquith can talk about poetry in these days, the fact, if it be a fact, increases my confidence in his competence for his task. I should suffer no pain even if I heard that he took a hand of cards after dinner, and I hope he takes care to get a game of golf at the week-end. I like men who have great responsibilities to carry their burdens easily, and to relax the bow as often as possible. The bigger the job you have in hand the more necessary it is to cultivate the habit of detachment. You want to walk away from the subject sometimes, as the artist walks away from his canvas to get a better view of his work. I never feel sure of an article until I have put it away, forgotten it, and read it again with a fresh mind, disengaged from the subject and seeing it objectively rather than subjectively. It is the affliction of the journalist that he has to face the light before he has had time to withdraw to a critical distance and to see his work with the detachment of the public.

There is nothing more mistaken than the view that because a thing is serious you must be thinking about it seriously all the time. If you do that you cease to be the master of your subject: the subject becomes the master of you. That is what is the matter with the fanatic. He is so obsessed by his idea that he cannot relate it to other ideas, and loses all sense of proportion, and often all sense of sanity. I have seen more unrelieved seriousness in a lunatic asylum than anywhere else.

The key to success is to come to a task with a fresh mind. That was the meaning of the very immoral advice given by a don to a friend of mine on the day before an examination. "What would you advise me to read to-night?" asked my friend, anxious to make the most of the few remaining hours. "If I were you," said the don, "I shouldn't read anything. I should get drunk." He did not mean that the business was so unimportant that it did not matter what he did. He meant that it was so important that he must forget all about it, and come to it afresh from the outside. And he used the most violent illustration he could find to express his meaning.

It is with the mind as with the soil. If you want to get the best out of your land you must change the crops, and sometimes even let the land lie fallow. And if you want to get the best out of your mind on a given theme you must let it range and have plenty of diversion. And the more remote the diversion is from the theme the better. I know a very grave man whose days are spent in the most responsible work, who goes to see Charlie Chaplin once or twice every week, and laughs like a schoolboy all the time. I should not trust his work less on that account: I should trust it all the more. I should know that he did not allow it to get the whip hand of him, that he kept sane and healthy by running out to play, as it were, occasionally.

I think all solemn men ought to take sixpenny-worth of Charlie Chaplin occasionally. And I'm certain they ought to play more. I believe that the real disease of Germany is that it has never learned to play. The bow is stretched all the time, and the nation is afflicted with a dreadful seriousness that suggests the madhouse by its lack of humour and gaiety. The oppressiveness of life begins with the child. Germany is one of The two countries in the world where the suicide of children is a familiar social fact. Years ago when I was in Cologne I christened it the City of the Elderly Children, and no one, I think, can have had any experience of Germany without being struck by the premature gravity of the young. If Germany had had fewer professors and a decent sprinkling of cricket and football grounds perhaps things might have been different. I don't generally agree with copybook maxims, but all work and no play does make Jack (or, rather, Hans) a dull boy.

Perhaps it is true that we play too much; but I'm quite sure that the Germans have played too little, and if there must be a mistake on one side or the other, let it be on the side of too much play.

ON THE INTELLIGENT GOLF BALL

I read the other day an article by my colleague "Arcturus" which I thought was a little boastful. It referred to a bull-dog. Now I cannot tell what there is about a bull-dog that makes people haughty, but it is certain that I have never known a case in which the companionship of that animal has not had this effect. The man who keeps a bull-dog becomes after a time only fit for the company of a bull-dog. He catches the august pride of the animal, seems to think like a bulldog, to talk in the brief, scornful tones of a bulldog, and even to look fat and formidable like a bull-dog. That, however, is not an uncommon phenomenon among those who live with animals. Go to a fat stock show and look at the men around the cattle pens. Or recall the pork butchers you have known and tell me——. But possibly you, sir, who read these lines, are a pork butcher and resent the implication. Sir, your resentment is just. You are the exception, sir—a most notable exception.

But my object here is not merely to warn "Arcturus" of the perilous company he is keeping. I refer to his bull-dog panegyric also to justify me in enlarging on my own private vanity. If he is permitted to write to the extent of a column on a bull-dog, I can at least claim the same latitude in regard to a sensible subject like golf. And I have this advantage over him, that I have a real message. I have a hint to offer that will mean money in pocket to you.