The way the world is going

When I think of the way in which mankind in general takes the gifts of science, gifts actual and gifts conditional, there comes back to my mind my own, perhaps earliest encounter with these gifts. It took the form of a box entitled, if I remember rightly, “The Young Chemist,” an inexpensive box with ungrammatical and badly printed instructions for eliciting wonders of science to “the delight of all beholders” who could be induced to behold. We evoked a “lead tree,” which in practice proved to be a mere seedling that damped off, and some sluggish gunpowder, and several very gratifying stinks and smells, and we wound up by mixing everything and preparing for a stupendous crash that never occurred. And another very early gift was a telephone made of two pill-boxes and a tightly stretched length of cotton between.

I still recall the sense of wonder, of passing beyond common experience during those pioneer experiments with this great modern convenience. My elder brother and I were to communicate secretly and marvellously by this instrument. I had no doubt, and he had no doubt, that things would vibrate along that stretched cotton, altogether lovelier and livelier than the common speech and whispers of every day. He went to an upper window, from which he shouted directions to me through the vulgar air, and I stood down in the backyard. The apparatus was adjusted, and I prepared to hear such things as I had never heard before. My brother up above was seen to whisper. “Can’t hear anything,” I called back. “You haven’t got it tight enough,” said my brother, and tried again. Still no elfin voices. “Tighter!” yelled my brother with that familiar note of fraternal threatening in his voice. I made a desperate effort. And the bottom came out of the pill-box! My brother’s head disappeared from the window, and I inferred he was coming downstairs.

Then, as now, I hated controversy. I was the nearer to the front door. I went off at once for a nice long solitary walk.

Since those early days science has showered its gifts upon my world and me. Science assisted by invention and stimulated by commercial enterprise. I realized that the “Young Chemist” and the pill-box telephone came only indirectly from the sublimated common sense of mankind. Science may illuminate and reveal and state and develop and suggest, but something is needed in the recipient before even a half-crown box of “chemicals” can be made to yield its best results. To the incurably puerile like Messrs. Amery and Winston Churchill chemistry will never be more than a search for stinks of offence, and a chemical industry that can produce the loveliest colours, exquisite and subtly useful substances, and the most enriching fertilizers, will be merely a necessary source of explosives and poison gas. And to the world at large, the possibility of radiating and receiving electro-magnetic waves means almost exactly what the promise of that pill-box telephone conveyed to my childish imagination. The hope of an undefined wonder, followed by disillusionment.

It must be almost half a century since the wireless transmission of electric phases was understood to be possible, and only within the present century that wireless telegraphy has been a practical reality. The wireless telephone and all the broadcasting business is a post-war outbreak. It came, with Mlle. Suzanne Lenglen, to distract the democratic mind from the far too difficult problems of organizing a world peace. We dropped that fatiguing and contentious subject for until after the next war, and went outside to fix our aerial between the chimney and the old fir tree.

And when it was fixed we were just going to sit down and listen and listen. We should hear the best music whenever we wished. Chaliapin and Melba would sing to us; President Coolidge and Mr. Baldwin would talk to us, simply, earnestly, directly; the most august in the world would wish us good evening and pass a friendly word; should a fire or a shipwreck happen we were to get the roar of the flames and the cries for help; Anita Loos and Charlie Chaplin (hitherto so silent) would tickle our humour, and A. A. Milne and Sir James Barrie join with us to delight the little ones when the children’s hour came round. Were we earnest, Einstein would adapt himself to the available powers of transmission, or President Nicholas Murray Butler, the authentic voice of America, grand commander of all existing orders, honorary doctor of every attainable university in the world, would remind us of the broad fundamentals of wisdom and nobility. There would be debates, and in a compact ten minutes Julian Huxley, for example, and Bernard Shaw would settle about Darwinism for ever. And then finally to religion, and we should hear masses of preachers as we chose, Dean Inge in his pulpit or Palestrina given from St. Peter’s itself. All the sporting results before we went to bed would be included, a weather forecast, advice about our gardens, treatment for influenza, and the exact time. One would live in a new world and ask in all the neighbours. Such was the dream of thousands of men, panting perilously on their ladders, and rather irritated and impatient to get that aerial fixed correctly.

It didn’t turn out like that. Instead of first rate came tenth rate; the music was by the Little Winklebeach Pier band; mysterious unknowns, Uncle Bray and Aunt Twaddle, usurped our hour with the children, the one precious hour when parents and children came together mentally; we were told short stories and read out scientific articles of a quality any magazine would reject; Mr. Shaw, when he tried to speak to us, was censored by the authorities, such as they were, and Professor Julian Huxley was interrupted; President Nicholas Murray Butler, it was found, could only speak in large print on superfine paper; the dog began barking untimely, and the news was drowned by the “oscillations” of an excited neighbour. Across it all dear old Mother Nature cast her net of “atmospherics” with a humour all her own. We began to ask ourselves for the first time what in particular the broadcasting was giving us that we could not get far better in some other fashion.

Music one can have at home now, very perfectly and beautifully rendered by the gramophone. Some of the newer records are marvellously true. There, indeed, one can get the very best performers and the music of one’s choice. One can summon the music when one thinks fit, by day or night, repeat it, control it, finish it as one wills. Even for jazz and dance music broadcasting has but one very slight advantage—that once it is started it goes on without any change of record. But the dance music only goes on for a small part of the evening, and at any moment it may give way to Doctor Flatulent being thoughtful and kindly in a non-sectarian way.

Religious services are also more perfectly available as gramophone records. News and time signals and so forth could be sent into a house far more conveniently if there were a silent recording apparatus such as the ticker. Broadcasting shouts out its information once and cannot be recalled. If you miss a word, that word is missed for good; names and figures are easily missed. If you do not hear the news at the time, you do not even know that it has been given. It is absurd to suppose that science and invention could not furnish us with a silent recording set as cheap and controllable as the listening set, if this side of the wireless enterprises was turned over to ordinary ticker transmission.

The much-discussed “talks” and debates and so on are, we discover, merely spoken magazine matter; they can be far more effectively studied in the magazine itself, where diagrams and illustrations be used in conjunction with them. The number of people who have never learnt to read or who are too lazy to read and yet intellectually active enough to be interested by “serious” topics when they are vocalized, must be very small indeed. I doubt if such people really follow what they are hearing. The book is the only adequate vehicle for modern thought and discussion and for the conveyance of exact knowledge. Between its pages there is no censorship and no interrupting boy official. Litera scripta manet.

As a medium for advertisement again, broadcasting suffers from the disadvantage that every one turns off the noise as soon as the advertisement begins. The bawling of loud speakers, as I have heard it in the streets of some French towns, is so obviously disconcerting to traffic that it is bound to be suppressed by legislation.

In all these matters broadcasting is an inferior substitute for better systems of transmitting news and evoking sound. Upon what is known technically as “humorous entertainment” I will be gently silent. “Radio drama” in which you cannot see the faces nor the gestures of the actors nor the scene in which they play is a new and useful art, if only because it teaches us what life must be for the blind. The listening for cuckoos which may perchance be cuckooing, or to lions who may oblige by roaring near the listening microphone, or suchlike noises of nature must be difficult to arrange and unattractive as a frequent amusement. There remain only certain possible uses of broadcasting for blind, lonely, and suffering people. To those I will return.

Most of us have been drawn sooner or later into the possession of some form of receiving apparatus, and it would be interesting to know just how many of these sets of apparatus sold are still in use. In Great Britain, where broadcasting has been centrally organized and where there is one national licensing system, it should not be difficult presently to determine the average life of the broadcast listener. I am inclined to suspect that a very large proportion of the sets sent out since the beginning must be already broken up or out of order. And that the life of the ordinary listener is so brief that there may soon be a grave dearth of listeners. But that may be because I cannot imagine myself a patient listener even for one day, and I am still more at a loss to imagine any sort of person becoming addicted to listening-in as a frequent entertainment. Other people may be less restless. I quite understand the stage of inauguration and eagerness, the initial delight of the new toy. And afterwards there may be a kind of struggle to keep on with a thing that began with so much hope and has given so much trouble. But sooner or later boredom and disappointment with these poor torrents of insignificant sounds must ensue. Are there indeed any indefatigable listeners who have stuck to this amusement since the beginning? If so, I think they are probably very sedentary persons, living in badly lit houses or otherwise unable to read, who have never realized the possibilities of the gramophone and the pianola, and who have no capacity nor opportunity for thought or conversation.

The rest of the available population is, I should imagine, passing rapidly through the listener stage from surprise to disillusionment. When they have flowed past, then I suggest that the whole broadcasting industry will begin to dry up. The British Government has created an important salaried official body to preside over the broadcasting programmes, and it relies upon this service in times of crisis for the distribution of tendential official information. In the end that admirable committee may find itself arranging schemes of entertainment for a phantom army of expiring licences, the last living listeners having dispersed and gone to other things. The ether will pulsate unheard with the bedtime talks of uncles who have lost their nephews and nieces, and “comics” all unaware of the emptiness of their reception, and the ultimate artfulness of official misinformation will throb in a void of inattention, as if it were the last of the dinosaurs calling for its mate.

And there will be about half-a-dozen convenient sinecures more for the Prime Minister to distribute.

The recent public discussions in the Press about broadcasting programmes are very significant symptoms. They reveal a widespread discontent among the present users of receiving sets. The disillusioned take little part in these debates. The waiters are still holding on and listening and complaining. Each one suggests a different “ideal programme.” These ideal programmes recall the first bright stages of hope. There is still the fancy that busy and eminent people may be induced to spend half a day preparing and timing and saying over a measured piece—that any broadcasting official may burke if he dislikes. There is still the conception of some vast orchestra playing music to suit every mind and taste simultaneously. There is still the craving for unsectarian religiosity, for faith in things in general, combined with faith in nothing in particular. Upon one thing only do they agree. Every one wants something in vivid contrast to what is provided.

The transmitting authorities, still unwilling to face the plain intimations of destiny, are trying all sorts of novelties, nervously and absurdly. The most delightful of all the recent attempts has been the thought-transmission experiments from the London centre. This was really radio-drama reduced to its simplest expression; even the words and sounds were omitted. It was pure blank listening. Sir Oliver Lodge cleared his throat and announced the crucial moment. Cloistered individuals sat and glared at objects and thought about them like anything. Listeners listened with straining ear-drums and painfully focussed minds. The poor ether, if it has feelings, must have felt like a cat harnessed to a cart—a most uncongenial job to put upon the theoretical vehicle of material vibrations. A hush fell upon the British Isles until Sir Oliver said “Ahem!” and permitted them to relax. Then we were to write in what we had thought or seen. The only really pleasing result of this widely diffused mind strain was that a lady in Torquay guessed object No. 5 very nearly, when object No. 3 was in the glare of the transmitting souls. The first recorded case of anticipatory wireless telepathy and clear evidence of the relativity of time....

But to radio mental nothings in this way was, perhaps, too delicate a task for the broadcasting, at least as a beginning. Something a little more material might conceivably have had a better chance of getting through. Transmitters sitting before steaming plates or other appetizing objects might more easily have conveyed impressions to fasting listeners. Perhaps this will be tried later as this restful custom of listening-in to nothing audible whatever extends.

Under the spell of the radio idea I have been doing my utmost to write impartial, impersonal, unsectarian, non-tendential, non-controversial, unprejudiced, kindly things about it, like the stuff its authorities invite us to transmit. Nevertheless, I am afraid that my own opinion peeps through, my opinion that the future of broadcasting is like the future of crossword puzzles and Oxford trousers, a very trivial future indeed. It will end as a Government job. There is a future for the wireless news ticker; that is a different proposition altogether. Yet my discouraging forecast is mingled with regret. There could be one very fine use made of broadcasting, though I cannot imagine how it could be put upon a commercially paying footing. It would give the poorest chance for any Government jobbing; there would be no scope in it for pushful young men. There are in the world a sad minority of lonely people, isolated people, endangered helpless people, sleepless people, suffering people who must lie on their backs, and who cannot handle books—and there are the blind. Convenient, portable, and not too noisy listening instruments now exist, and for this band of exceptional folk I wish there could be a transmission, day and night—and the slack hours of the night for them are often more dreadful than the day—of fine, lovely, and heartening music, beautiful chanting and the reciting of a sort of heroic anthology. The sturdy will of the race, the courage in the world, could speak to its faltering sons and daughters. There can be a great hunger for the human voice. How good for many a tormented spirit to hear in the darkness: “Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid!”

3 April, 1927.