THE B.B.C. AND WAR MOODS : I
By ROSE MACAULAY This is so with music, which can, like nothing else (except philosophy and religion), order the mind's crazy, incoherent chaos into a pattern. But what pattern? That formed by the jigging of jazz, dance bands, sentimental singing, the lumbering windy cinema organ, ending with a smirking and treacly " Keep smiling," endorsing the view that life is a tale told by a vulgar idiot—roughly, it may be called, the simian view? The B.B.C. believes, apparently rightly, that that is the majority view ; but, though the demand has probably grown with war conditions and war mentality, the supply has not, I believe, grown ; this is not the pattern it is sought to impose on us.
Then there is the sentimental mood interpreted by charming tunes, usually familiar ; this pattern is received by the senses and emotions. At the other pole, there is harsh and bold cacophony, austere, diligent, abstract, almost fleshless ; this is a pattern we are being encouraged more frequently to receive ; it does not, I think, fit with war moods, which are, when not tensed for action, labour and endurance, relaxed to tired, pleasure-craving, sensuous simpli- city, and not4t xperimental. And last, there is the pattern formed by the highest and sublimest arrangement of notes, rich in passion, beauty, intellect, spirit. It is held that a larger public is being won for this. It is possible. The little-trained can grasp it, or bits of it, while remaining deaf to or jarred by Svendsen, Bax, Walton, and symphonic tone-poems. The present tragedy, the present heroism, connect with the one, not with the other ; the present lunacy is saned by it. Much in war connects also with the simian drivel, much else with the familiar tunes. One way or another, the pattern of music somewhere fits the mood.
The assault on the mind with words seems more calculated to mould, to lay a form on, uncertain thought and feeling. Here war moods are definitely assumed, played on, or played up. The war dramas, for instance, about one or another European country. Some- times the country is personified, speaks, Hardy-like, with a voice ; usually only its inhabitants speak. Music screams ; there is a note of hysteria, loud noises off, as of trains, explosions, mines going up, patriots being shot. The people are all patriots, guerilla-minded, noble of speech and deed ; they are all underground ; no one seems to live and work on the earth's surface. They do not sit and talk about money, their animals, crops, love, funerals ; they have an air perpetually keyed up for the hour of liberation. In the intervals between wrecking-activities and firing-squads, bursts of shrill music express them. We find them disembodied and remote ; they are not people in the round, with faces and voices and qualities ; these persecuted romantics function in limbo, divorced from life ; they are noble, tormented shades, so little real that they hardly exact pity.
There are some intelligent and sensitive minds working on these " national day " programmes, and a few have been admirable ; notably one on France, with French music and poetry ; it avoided all the snags, and achieved beauty. And there was once a very lovely talk on cruising among Greek islands, spoken beautifully by a Greek woman ; the 'nostalgia was acute, Greece shimmered vivid before us ; it was worth a dozen patriotic draMas, for it had corporeal detail and no propaganda aim ; Greece was islands and sea, and spoke no word ; countries should never speak ; but never. These pro- grammes, assuring us that Frenchmen, Greeks, Czechs, Norwegians, Poles, are fighting the good fight, omit in doing so td make them Frenchmen, Greeks, Czechs, Norwegians and Poles ; they are merely embodiments of an aim. Do they think to rouse our sympathy for these puppet patriots? As to our foes in these dramas, their brutality is as inevitable as the broken English in which they converse among themselves, and as unimpressive. Unimpressive not because war moods do not include hate, but because they are puppet enemies. There are always minds to receive the pattern of hate, and to reject it. More, I think, to reject it. Noel Coward's famous song was disliked, probably, by the majority.
Hate is not often emitted by the B.B.C. ; more derision, placid sarcasm, and moral disapproval. There are pauses, inflections of voice, even in the news, that convey these. Compassion is not encouraged, except for ourselves and our Allies ; enemies killed, hurt, or homeless from our bombing get none. I should guess the B.B.C. tone in this matter (which has improved in the last months) to be just about as civilised as the majority view among listeners, more so than one minority, less so than another. The tone is " serve them right ; they began it " ; one never hears, as one hears from so many of the public, " poor things," or " it's tough on the children " ; nor does one hear the crude exultations of others. Bombed Germans are not put to us as people, but as pawns in the war effort ; that is part of Government policy.
The war effort, constantly to the fore, damages many programmes. It often spoils landscapes. " Come, I will show you Quebec," our guide said one evening. To be shown Quebec, that ancient French civ climbing up from the St. Lawrence, steep and narrow-streesed, to the citadel, the great river sweeping ice-green at its feet, its harbour ship-laden, its old squares full of cafés, markets, churches, and the French tongue of Louis Quatorze—that would be some- thing. But what a Quebec that B.B.C. guide showed us! One heard not bells, nor French chatter, nor street cries, but shrieking engine-whistles, hooting factory-sirens, creaking cranes, the clatter of machinery—it might have been Leeds. " Very like England," the tourists kept saying. But Quebec is not in the least like England. There were comments on the traffic and the factories ; Quebec was shown in terms of " the war effort." Quebec itself eluded its guides ; perhaps they were not trying, perhaps they did not care for Quebec, only for Quebec in relation to the war.
It reminded me of a conversation long ago with the wife of the Soviet Ambassador. " You should go," she said to me, " to Russia. You would enjoy it." " Yes," said I, " I should indeed." And saw snowy steppes running towards dark forests, my jingling sleigh whirled along behind white horses, the flowery meadows and rich orchards of the Crimea, the golden domes of Kiev, the awful outline of the Kremlin. . . . " Yes," I said, and kindled, " I should enjoy seeing Russia." "You would like," said the Ambassador's wife, with kindly firmness, and she kindled too, " our schools, our hospitals, our factories, our prisons, our creches, our youth hostels, our public lavatories." " But no," I corrected her. " I don't like schools, hospitals, factories, prisons, creches, youth hostels, or public lavatories, even in England. I want to see the wild horses on the steppes, the Volga . . ." "Our factories," murmured the Ambassa- dor's wife, "our lavatories . . ." It was like an incantation . Her eyes shone with visions of that Russia that she desired me, that I did not desire, to see. We parted: all the Russias stretched enormously between us.
Similarly these showmen of Quebec and elsewhere. They believe —or determine—that news of factories falls like music on our ears, meeting a mood and a need. In an incalculable world, who shall say that they are always wrong? They may have received, through the delicate tentacles they put out, some encouragement in their strange view. To most of us, however, there is a dull, metallic unreality about these war-conditioned places.
But not all their places are thus marred. They can tell good and beautiful travellers' tales, of coral reefs, mountains, deserts, islands, beaches ; they should tell more.
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