MARGINAL COMMENTS
By MONICA REDLICH
tc WE are used to carrying bullion," said unperturbed officials of the P. and 0. when the Ranpura grounded with ten million pounds' worth of Chinese art treasures aboard. In much the same matter-of-fact tones might a king remark that his palace was rather draughty, or a jockey that he was really almost tired of winning the Derby. There are very definite disadvantages about being an expert, not the least of them being that one loses so many opportunities for astonishment, agitation, and wonder. The cloud-capped towers are a question of stopped-up gutters to the caretaker who looks after them, and the gentleman to whom a primrose was a simple primrose probably got a good deal more fun out of it than the man to whom it was an intricate piece of botany. It is far from true in practice that the more one knows about a thing the more interesting it becomes : one has only to listen to the conversation of people who have mastered their job to see that a gala celebration can be as boring a part of the trivial round as the morning train to the office. " It's so dull," complained a young friend . of mine, a cadet on a. big Pacific limier: " nothing but Shanghai, Honolulu, Vancouver, Shanghai, Honolulu, Vancouver . . . " A policeman, having arrested one or two people, sorted out a street accident, and given chase to a smash-cni-grab shoplifter, will sit down that evening and complain as if he were being personally insulted that nothing ever happens on his beat. Truly, the experts have a harder time of it than anyone seems to imagine..
It might reasonably be argued, of course, that experts no less than the plodding layman reduce their work to routine out of self-defence—to give themselves time for the paramount human activity which is known as thinking things out. Very reasonably. A famous politician, photographed on his doorstep with an expression upon his face appropriate to the grave state of international. affairs, will ten to one be wondering whether he ought to have put on a thicker overcoat. Anyone who has ever been offered a penny for his thoughts knows the acute difficulty of scrambling together something which shall sound worth even that modest sum ; and the blotting-pads after any conference sufficiently grand to have blotting-pads at all would reveal such a collection of interlacing circles, of boxes drawn in perspective, of heavily scribbled-out profiles, as could leave one in no doubt of the problems which afflict even the wisest of us on even the most momentous occasions.
Since the expert loses so much of the fun, however, it is an obvious and consoling reflection that one ought to remain as stupid as possible. Not only does one get the maximum excitement from all catastrophes, rumours, disclosures, alarums, and excursions : not only has one the overwhelming conversational asset of requiring to be informed or even instructed : but one has the perennial and exhilarating pleasure of hearing the expert treat the prodigious, the fantastic, the almost impossible like an order for groceries. "He stuck down an estimate on the back of a menu," said some man of a huge engineering scheme, "but of course he was drunk at the time, so now we're half a million out" No one but an expert could carry off a remark like that ; even if anyone else had the knowledge, he would still be impressed by it, and sound either worried or surprised. Nor could anyone but a famous physician observe, as one did to me the other day when about to carve the mutton, ." It's a long time since I dissected a leg." Pope was all wrong about a little learning. A smattering of knowledge, combined with the capacity to sit back and listen, provides many simple pleasures which can never be shared by the wise, the efficient, or the well-informed.
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