Strix
Images of Fear
SHUDDER to think ' The phrase is nowadays not frequently employed. Just over fifteen years ago the Chief of the Imperial General Staff (General Ironside as he then was) made a statement to the press about the expected German offensive in Western Europe. He said—I think in April—that he shuddered to think what would have happened if the Ger- mans had attacked in March. They did, of. course, attack in May, and within a month Western Europe—less the United Kingdom, and some loose endS south of Paris which were quickly tidied up—lay at Hitler's feet. It seems clear in retro- spect that there was, from the CIGS's point of view, even less point in shuddering than there was in thinking Did he, in fact, shudder? Nobody acquainted, however remotely, with the Field-Marshal can visualise him doing so. Yet the obsolescent form of speech he used must at some stage in the history of our race have had a warranty in human be- haviour. People must once have shuddered when they thought of impending disaster. 'My heart bleeds for you' is a declara- tion with its roots in- poetic licence. 'I shudder to think' is more spontaneous, more organic. Although, when'hurled across the floor of municipal council chambers in defiance of some sewerage scheme, it sounds rather 'ham,' it remains neverthe- less part of the orator's legal tender; . and although, in that currency, it has the showy status of a five-pound note, or per- haps of the half-sovereign which (before the days of the Flying Squad) famous and ulstered detebtives offered to the Jehu of a hansom cab, we still do not challenge the basis of what is now a verbal flourish. We still vaguely assume that once, long ago, people did shudder to think.
* * The discontinuance of this practice has. almost certainly made life easier for the human race: Our age is haunted by bogeys; and they seem, to bogey-fanciers, incomparably more dismaying than those which troubled our feather-bedded fore- bears who had nothing but the Black Death, or the Civil War, or a Napoleonic invasion, to worry about. If all serious- minded people, from Sir Richard Acland down, literally did shudder when they thought about the things they shudder to think about, the nation's life would be gripped by a sporadic palsy, and citizens who have to travel in crowded public con- veyances would be gravely incommoded.
For myself, I think so rarely that I would, certainly notice it if I shuddered in the process; 1 never do. This, since my thoughts are of a shallow and mainly sanguine nature, is nothing to go by; but I do not believe that even the most sapient and progressive persons any longer quake—literally quake—before their darker fancies. I am, on the other hand, "prepared to bet that there was a time when they did so. and that the phrase, 'I shudder to think,' is the legacy of a physical or nervous reaction to which the human frame is no longer prone.
* * * 'It made,' I heard a lady say the other day, `my hair stand on end'; and as she spoke I found myself longing—for she had abundant tresses and was wearing a peculiarly ridiculous hat—to witness this phenomenon. It is still frequently alluded to in conversation. and was once a commonplace of literature and the cruder forms of art. When Macbeth recalled how `my fell of hair Would at a dismal treatise rouse and stir As life were in't,' was his creator merely employing an already hackneyed figure of speech, or did the scalps of the Elizabethans really react in this way to fear?
Perhaps our hair does rouse and stir when we are frightened; but surely, if this does happen, one would have seen it hap- pening, or noticed one's own hair doing it. Our bodies do respond in curious ways to fear. 1 lived for more than thirty years under the delusion that in real life nobody's' knees knocked together from fright, that the whole thing was a sort of comic convention of the pantomime stage. I shall never forget the shame with which, coming for the first time under lire in the company of a man of legendary courage, I found that my knees were knocking together like mad.
Long afterwards I was relieved to hear that even very brave men are not immune from thiS weakness. The fact emerged from a story which I once heard a distinguished sailor tell against himself. He was commanding an aircraft-carrier in the Mediterranean. The convoy they were escorting to Malta had been under continuous and heavy attack from the air all day, and towards evening the carrier sustained a direct hit. Her flight-deck was a shambles, and her captain, looking down from the bridge on the dazed crew struggling to sort things out, suddenly realised that, what with strain and shock and exhaustion, he himself was exhibiting all the classical symptoms of terror : his knees were knocking tdgether, his hands were trembling, his teeth were chattering.
Appalled; he leant for support upon the rail of the bridge and stopped the uncontrollable agitation of his jaws by clench- ing them upon his pipe. Afterwards he learned that these precautions had earned him a reputation for perfect sang-froid. News spread quickly through the ship that the Old Man was leaning over the bridge, puffing at his pipe as though he was on Brighton Pier; and the shaken sailors gained courage from this exhibition of imperturbability.
Fear, the most unbecoming as well as the most deleterious of our emotions, is terribly infectious, but I think that often its purely physical manifestations check rather than accelerate its spread. lf, in a dangerous situation, one man is seen by his companions to be trembling or showing other symptoms of having lost his nerve, the spectacle acts as a sort of challenge or a warning, and may even be reassuring in a backhanded way. 'At least,' each of them feels, 'that man is more frightened than I am'; and they take a firmer grip on themselves, sum' moiling up pride to help them keep fear at bay.
It is different, of course, with reactions that are not un- controllable. If the worst-frightened man, instead of merely trembling, starts to run away or lies down in the bottom of a trench, there is a danger that the rest, seeing not a challenge but an excuse in his behaviour, will follow his example. That is how panics start, and the human spirit dies.
But we seem to have digressed a long way from figures of speech, and, since it was not my purpose to give you anything to shudder to think about, it will be as well to break off.
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