MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD NICOLSON
ISPENT an agreeable afternoon last Saturday judging a com- petition between the several Young Farmers' Clubs in Kent. This may sound a chilly and most agricultural ordeal ; it suggests sheepdog trials upon the North Downs with the Weald of Kent below one, wrapped in a coverlet of snow ; it suggests ploughing competitions at which the judges stamp cold feet upon the iron earth and cower together against the north-west wind. The contest in which my judgement was invited was, however, not rural, but urbane. It took place in the warm Council Chamber of the County Hall at Maidstone ; the Young Farmers were dressed in their Sunday suits and disposed comfortably and at ease in the auditorium of the Chamber ; and when it was all over we went up to the canteen and were given tea and cake while the steam from the tea- urns clouded the cold windows and slowly obscured the prospect of snow-covered roofs and the cold parapets of Maidstone Gaol. The competition was, .n fact, a competition in public speaking, and seldom have I witnessed any ceremony more firmly and efficiently controlled. There were as many as nineteen speakers from the different clubs ; the junior competitors were not allowed to speak for more than five minutes, the seniors were restricted to seven. A minute before their time was up a gong rang gently ; an ex- pression of taut agony would flit across the face of the speaker, but in every case he or she finished neatly before being counted out by a second gong. Thanks to these firm methods the whole 'proceedings lasted little more than two hours. I could not but reflect upon the advantage which the House of Commons would acquire from the enforcement of similar methods of concision.
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The purpose of such competitions is primarily to provide the Young Farmers' Clubs with some central function when the weather is not amenable to any competitions out of doors. But there are other and even more admirable aims which inspire those who organise and stimulate such competitions. They are aware that even the youngest farmer (and some of those who took part in the competition were very young indeed) must benefit by being forced to think out the principles behind his daily manual occupation. They are aware also that to speak in public in competition with one's fellows creates self-confidence and introduces an element of emulation into areas outside the ordinary dig and scrub of their lives. And they are aware that the only antidote to our modern malady of mass-slogans is to encourage young people to put their ideas into their own words. A boy or girl who in private con- versation, or in the reeking intimacy of barn or byre, is quite content to repeat as personal convictions the phrases which he or she may have heari from someone else, soon discovers that it is better, when engaged in public speaking, to be certain and sincere about the words one employs. And by such means, by such com- petitions, young people may be induced not only to persuade their fellows and to defend their cause, but to realise that words are living, almost organic, things which must be tended with cleanliness and care. In all the confusion of thought and feeling which seethes around us, and which fills the pessimists with helpless despair, there is at least this element of hope and value, namely, a really passionate desire among young people to know and understand. Nobody who heard the Young Farmers of Kent talking against each other on Saturday can have gone away in a despairing mood ; on the contrary, the Young Farmers were both competent, thoughtful and alert.
* * * * The three judges of this particular competition (Sir Edward Hardy, Miss Edith Evans and myself) had been asked respectively to concentrate upon the three main elements of public speaking, namely, content, style and effectiveness. Sir Edward's task was to decide which of the several speakers talked the best sense ; Miss Evans specialised in elocution, and gave the Young Farmers some excellent advice as to the value, when at a loss for a word or phrase, of taking a deep, deep breath ; and my job was to estimate the effectiveness of each speech upon the audience. I was thus obliged to reconsider in its simplest form the technique of public speaking, and to examine from a fresh angle the problems of demeanour, posture, gesture, sincerity and ease. It was interesting to observe that the junior members still had the schoolroom manner of speaking, twisting their fingers in front of them, fixing their eyes immutably upon a single spot, and allowing to appear upon their young foreheads a little frown of concentration as they sought bravely and desperately to remember the piece which they had learnt by heart. The senior members, on the other hand, were already freeing themselves from the classroom style, were able—a little awkwardly perhaps—to turn from one section of their audience to the other, and even dared at moments to raise an arm in gesture or to lean forward impressively as they made a point. None of them appeared to have solved, either to their own satisfaction or to that of their audiences, the elementary problem of the relation between a speaker and his notes. Under the terms of the competition they were allowed only to bring with them such notes as could be written on one side of a postcard. I could see that many of them had, failed 'to write their notes with sufficient clarity, so that, in the tremor of the moment, they were unable to read quickly what they had written down. Moreover, they had not learnt the simple lesson that when consulting your notes it is best to do so openly, since to squint down at notes lying upon the desk means that you can neither see nor be heard. But there were other and more important tips for public speaking which this competition suggested to me. * * * * There was, for instance, the problem of posture. Where should one look? How should one face? What should one do with one's hands? The inexpert speaker is apt to fix his eye upon a single spot, and to acquire thereby a monotony of expression as in a mesmeric trance. At the other extreme there is the speaker who, in seeking to convey an impression of oratorical ease, turns constantly to right and left in almost panic restlessness. The problem of hands is even more inconvenient. To keep the hands permanently in coat or trouser pocket may be comforting to the speaker, but to some audiences creates the impression of crude casualness; to adopt the Balfourian style of resting the hands lightly upon the coat lapels may indicate an elder statesman attitude of intolerable superiority. An excellent compromise between these two extremes is to hold a bundle of notes or papers negligently in the right hand and to allow the fingers, but not the thumb, of the left hand to slip lightly into the left-hand coat (but preferably not trouser) pocket. The problem of gesture is almost insoluble, and is perhaps one about which the beginner should not allow himself to think, since, unless his gestures be spontaneous and unconscious, they are bound to become stilted. The art of gesticulation, which forms so effective an element in Latin and Celtic oratory, is not one which comes easily either to the English or the Scots. I have been told that the guiding rule should be that no gesture should ever be made below she waist. I find that rule most disconcerting. since all upward gestures appear to me to be the accompaniment of oratory far higher than any which I can myself command. * * * *
And then there is the question of nervousness. What advice could I give the Young Farmers who quit the plough for the platform on this subject of nervousness? It is not really much help to be assured that no man ever made a good speech unless he was nervous about making it. I am not even sure that this true. There are, I think, four precepts to be observed. First, that if you make a public speech three times a week for thirty years you will find in the end that your nervousness begins to fade. Second, that if you remember how to begin, and, above all, how to end, then the middle of the speech can often look after itself. Third, that, when nervous, it is dangerous to make jokes; hilarity does not accord well with the faltering voice, the knocking knee. And, above all, say what you think and think what you say.
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