MARGINAL COMMENTS
By ROSE MACAULAY
PERUSING the articles in my daily and weekly . journals, I read very frequently of shrieks and cries. The other day, having learnt from various news- papers that the air . was thus being rent, I paused to consider this phenomenon, so audible to leader-writers, of continual clamour. I had been reading of " shrieks," " howls," " yells," " shouts," " yawps," that were, it seemed to the writers,' being emitted by " sanetioiiists," who deSired the application of the League COveriant to aggressing nations. While in journals of another colour, I read that similar loud cries were being -uttered by those who disapproved of such hampering of aggressor States. And I perceived that the tones in which- these opposed schools of thought uttered their comments sounded peculiarly loud and shrill to those of the other party.
Here, thought I, was a psychological discovery. Do the voices -otthose with whom we disagree always sound louder than those which utter our own views ? Often haVe read .letters to the PreSS from those who hold that cyclists should, like other vehicles, carry rear-lights, describing . the " loud shrieks " with which they hear cyclists protest that they will do no such thing ; and cyclists riposte with their tale of the " bellowings " of those who would so inconvenience them. And, through those four noisy years long since, did not we in England read of Germans shrieking their hate, while they in Germany heard of similar loud cries of distaste 'emitted in England and in .France ? Little Archbishop Laud, dis- approving of the House of Commons, called it '" this noise " ; while members of this body professed to hear " Canterburian howlings." And so always. As Bishop Berkeley remarked, " the worst cause produceth the greatest clamour." The wrong party is also the noisy party. How rarely do we ourselves shriek or howl our views ! How frequently do our assailants so ! You may overhear fragments of dialogue anywhere which indicate this truth. " He [she] shouted at me like Mad. But I said to him [her] quite quietly . ."
" I didn't say a word. But this I did say, and I Said it very quietly . . ." It is rarely; " I bellowed at him ; I howled him down ; he answered me quietly." An onlooker, reporting the dispute, would, Lthink, represent as the louder speaker him with whom he least agreed. Reading in a novel, " said Smith, quietly," you may almost safely infer Smith to be in the right ; your heart goes out to Smith. There are exceptions ; there are occasions in- fiction when the bad- speak quietly, and very sinister this is ; their quietness :becomes- then • abnormal, unnatural, rather terrifying'. Quietness should be left to the good; usurped by villains, it curdles the blood. . I leave it to psychologists to explain this Peculiar alliance of wrong-headedness and noise ; such surface observers as myself can but note it. I have .wondered if it extends to those aerial voices which address. us on such varied themes. Do those which utter sentiments and opinions which we can approve come to us as still small voices; gently stroking the light air ? Da those Which deliver themselves of false - doetrine thunder raucous in our ears ? But this, you will Say,- Can be rectified by the turning of a knob. I suppose that We must tune wrong-headed wireless speakers very low that they may not sound to us like shrieks, whereas those who speak truth will, even if communicated with the utmost capacity in our machines, still sound soft and quiet.- " He said to us very quietly .
-So Truth comes treading soft-foot, murmuring like a dove or a noontide bee, searce 'audible but 'to - the instructed ear, while Error, harpy-like, rends the air with her shrieks,
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