Thirty
miles up-stage, pursued by advertisements of buckboards guaranteed not
to break their king-bolts, and later (which is what the tribe were after
all the time) some tribal authority or other mends the road.
This is only a big-scale diagram, but with a little attention you can
see the tribal instinct of self-preservation quite logically
underrunning all sorts of queer modern developments.
As the tribe grows, and men do not behold the horizon from edge to
unbroken edge, their desire to know all about the next man weakens a
little - but not much. Outside the cities are still the long distances,
the 'vast, unoccupied areas' of the advertisements; and the men who come
and go yearn to keep touch with and report themselves as of old to
their lodges. A man stepping out of the dark into the circle of the
fires naturally, if he be a true man, holds up his hands and says, 'I,
So-and-So, am here.' You can watch the ritual in full swing at any hotel
when the reporter (pro Tribal Herald) runs his eyes down the list of
arrivals, and before he can turn from the register is met by the
newcomer, who, without special desire for notoriety, explains his
business and intentions. Observe, it is always at evening that the
reporter concerns himself with strangers. By day he follows the
activities of his own city and the doings of nearby chiefs; but when it
is time to close the stockade, to laager the wagons, to draw the
thorn-bush back into the gap, then in all lands he reverts to the Tribal
Herald, who is also the tribal Outer Guard.
There are countries where a man is indecently pawed over by chattering
heralds who bob their foul torches in his face till he is singed and
smoked at once. In Canada the necessary 'Stand and deliver your
sentiments' goes through with the large decency that stamps all the
Dominion. A stranger's words are passed on to the tribe quite
accurately; no dirt is put into his mouth, and where the heralds judge
that it would be better not to translate certain remarks they
courteously explain why.
It was always delightful to meet the reporters, for they were men
interested in their land, with the keen, unselfish interest that one
finds in young house-surgeons or civilians. Thanks to the (Boer) war,
many of them had reached out to the ends of our earth, and spoke of the
sister nations as it did one good to hear. Consequently the
interviews - which are as dreary for the reporter as the reported - often
turned into pleasant and unpublished talks. One felt at every turn of
the quick sentences to be dealing with made and trained players of the
game - balanced men who believed in decencies not to be disregarded,
confidences not to be violated, and honour not to be mocked. (This may
explain what men and women have told me - that there is very little of
the brutal domestic terrorism of the Press in Canada, and not much
blackmailing.) They neither spat nor wriggled; they interpolated no
juicy anecdotes of murder or theft among their acquaintance; and not
once between either ocean did they or any other fellow-subjects
volunteer that their country was 'law-abiding.'
You know the First Sign-post on the Great Main Road? 'When a Woman
advertises that she is virtuous, a Man that he is a gentleman, a
Community that it is loyal, or a Country that it is law-abiding - go the
other way!'
Yet, while the men's talk was so good and new, their written word seemed
to be cast in conventional, not to say old-fashioned, moulds. A quarter
of a century ago a sub-editor, opening his mail, could identify the
Melbourne Argus, the Sydney Morning Herald, or the Cape Times as
far as he could see them. Even unheaded clippings from them declared
their origin as a piece of hide betrays the beast that wore it. But he
noticed then that Canadian journals left neither spoor nor scent - might
have blown in from anywhere between thirty degrees of latitude - and had
to be carefully identified by hand. To-day, the spacing, the headlines,
the advertising of Canadian papers, the chessboard-like look of the open
page which should be a daily beautiful study in black and white, the
brittle pulp-paper, the machine-set type, are all as standardised as the
railway cars of the Continent. Indeed, looking through a mass of
Canadian journals is like trying to find one's own sleeper in a corridor
train. Newspaper offices are among the most conservative organisations
in the world; but surely after twenty-five years some changes might be
permitted to creep in; some original convention of expression or
assembly might be developed.
I drew up to this idea cautiously among a knot of fellow-craftsmen. 'You
mean,' said one straight-eyed youth, 'that we are a back-number copying
back-numbers?'
It was precisely what I did mean, so I made haste to deny it. 'We know
that,' he said cheerfully. 'Remember we haven't the sea all round
us - and the postal rates to England have only just been lowered. It will
all come right.'
Surely it will; but meantime one hates to think of these splendid people
using second-class words to express first-class emotions.
And so naturally from Journalism to Democracy. Every country is entitled
to her reservations, and pretences, but the more 'democratic' a land
is, the more make-believes must the stranger respect. Some of the Tribal
Heralds were very good to me in this matter, and, as it were, nudged me
when it was time to duck in the House of Rimmon.
