When I think of the way in which mankind in general takes the gifts of
science, gifts actual and gifts conditional, there comes back to my
mind my own, perhaps earliest encounter with these gifts. It took the
form of a box entitled, if I remember rightly, “The Young Chemist,”
an inexpensive box with ungrammatical and badly printed instructions
for eliciting wonders of science to “the delight of all beholders” who
could be induced to behold. We evoked a “lead tree,” which in practice
proved to be a mere seedling that damped off, and some sluggish
gunpowder, and several very gratifying stinks and smells, and we wound
up by mixing everything and preparing for a stupendous crash that never
occurred. And another very early gift was a telephone made of two
pill-boxes and a tightly stretched length of cotton between.
I still recall the sense of wonder, of passing beyond common
experience during those pioneer experiments with this great modern
convenience. My elder brother and I were to communicate secretly and
marvellously by this instrument. I had no doubt, and he had no doubt,
that things would vibrate along that stretched cotton, altogether
lovelier and livelier than the common speech and whispers of every day.
He went to an upper window, from which he shouted directions to me
through the vulgar air, and I stood down in the backyard. The apparatus
was adjusted, and I prepared to hear such things as I had never heard
before. My brother up above was seen to whisper. “Can’t hear anything,”
I called back. “You haven’t got it tight enough,” said my brother, and
tried again. Still no elfin voices. “Tighter!” yelled my brother with
that familiar note of fraternal threatening in his voice. I made a
desperate effort. And the bottom came out of the pill-box! My brother’s
head disappeared from the window, and I inferred he was coming
downstairs.
Then, as now, I hated controversy. I was the nearer to the front door.
I went off at once for a nice long solitary walk.
Since those early days science has showered its gifts upon my world
and me. Science assisted by invention and stimulated by commercial
enterprise. I realized that the “Young Chemist” and the pill-box
telephone came only indirectly from the sublimated common sense of
mankind. Science may illuminate and reveal and state and develop
and suggest, but something is needed in the recipient before even a
half-crown box of “chemicals” can be made to yield its best results.
To the incurably puerile like Messrs. Amery and Winston Churchill
chemistry will never be more than a search for stinks of offence, and
a chemical industry that can produce the loveliest colours, exquisite
and subtly useful substances, and the most enriching fertilizers,
will be merely a necessary source of explosives and poison gas. And
to the world at large, the possibility of radiating and receiving
electro-magnetic waves means almost exactly what the promise of that
pill-box telephone conveyed to my childish imagination. The hope of an
undefined wonder, followed by disillusionment.
It must be almost half a century since the wireless transmission
of electric phases was understood to be possible, and only within
the present century that wireless telegraphy has been a practical
reality. The wireless telephone and all the broadcasting business is
a post-war outbreak. It came, with Mlle. Suzanne Lenglen, to distract
the democratic mind from the far too difficult problems of organizing
a world peace. We dropped that fatiguing and contentious subject for
until after the next war, and went outside to fix our aerial between
the chimney and the old fir tree.
And when it was fixed we were just going to sit down and listen and
listen. We should hear the best music whenever we wished. Chaliapin
and Melba would sing to us; President Coolidge and Mr. Baldwin would
talk to us, simply, earnestly, directly; the most august in the world
would wish us good evening and pass a friendly word; should a fire or
a shipwreck happen we were to get the roar of the flames and the cries
for help; Anita Loos and Charlie Chaplin (hitherto so silent) would
tickle our humour, and A. A. Milne and Sir James Barrie join with us
to delight the little ones when the children’s hour came round. Were
we earnest, Einstein would adapt himself to the available powers of
transmission, or President Nicholas Murray Butler, the authentic voice
of America, grand commander of all existing orders, honorary doctor of
every attainable university in the world, would remind us of the broad
fundamentals of wisdom and nobility. There would be debates, and in a
compact ten minutes Julian Huxley, for example, and Bernard Shaw would
settle about Darwinism for ever. And then finally to religion, and we
should hear masses of preachers as we chose, Dean Inge in his pulpit
or Palestrina given from St. Peter’s itself. All the sporting results
before we went to bed would be included, a weather forecast, advice
about our gardens, treatment for influenza, and the exact time. One
would live in a new world and ask in all the neighbours. Such was the
dream of thousands of men, panting perilously on their ladders, and
rather irritated and impatient to get that aerial fixed correctly.
It didn’t turn out like that. Instead of first rate came tenth rate;
the music was by the Little Winklebeach Pier band; mysterious unknowns,
Uncle Bray and Aunt Twaddle, usurped our hour with the children, the
one precious hour when parents and children came together mentally; we
were told short stories and read out scientific articles of a quality
any magazine would reject; Mr. Shaw, when he tried to speak to us, was
censored by the authorities, such as they were, and Professor Julian
Huxley was interrupted; President Nicholas Murray Butler, it was found,
could only speak in large print on superfine paper; the dog began
barking untimely, and the news was drowned by the “oscillations” of an
excited neighbour. Across it all dear old Mother Nature cast her net of
“atmospherics” with a humour all her own. We began to ask ourselves for
the first time what in particular the broadcasting was giving us that
we could not get far better in some other fashion.
Music one can have at home now, very perfectly and beautifully rendered
by the gramophone. Some of the newer records are marvellously true.
There, indeed, one can get the very best performers and the music of
one’s choice. One can summon the music when one thinks fit, by day or
night, repeat it, control it, finish it as one wills. Even for jazz and
dance music broadcasting has but one very slight advantage--that once
it is started it goes on without any change of record. But the dance
music only goes on for a small part of the evening, and at any moment
it may give way to Doctor Flatulent being thoughtful and kindly in a
non-sectarian way.
Religious services are also more perfectly available as gramophone
records. News and time signals and so forth could be sent into a house
far more conveniently if there were a silent recording apparatus such
as the ticker. Broadcasting shouts out its information once and cannot
be recalled. If you miss a word, that word is missed for good; names
and figures are easily missed. If you do not hear the news at the time,
you do not even know that it has been given. It is absurd to suppose
that science and invention could not furnish us with a silent recording
set as cheap and controllable as the listening set, if this side of the
wireless enterprises was turned over to ordinary ticker transmission.
The much-discussed “talks” and debates and so on are, we discover,
merely spoken magazine matter; they can be far more effectively studied
in the magazine itself, where diagrams and illustrations be used in
conjunction with them. The number of people who have never learnt to
read or who are too lazy to read and yet intellectually active enough
to be interested by “serious” topics when they are vocalized, must
be very small indeed. I doubt if such people really follow what they
are hearing. The book is the only adequate vehicle for modern thought
and discussion and for the conveyance of exact knowledge. Between its
pages there is no censorship and no interrupting boy official. _Litera
scripta manet._
As a medium for advertisement again, broadcasting suffers from
the disadvantage that every one turns off the noise as soon as the
advertisement begins. The bawling of loud speakers, as I have heard it
in the streets of some French towns, is so obviously disconcerting to
traffic that it is bound to be suppressed by legislation.
In all these matters broadcasting is an inferior substitute for better
systems of transmitting news and evoking sound. Upon what is known
technically as “humorous entertainment” I will be gently silent. “Radio
drama” in which you cannot see the faces nor the gestures of the actors
nor the scene in which they play is a new and useful art, if only
because it teaches us what life must be for the blind. The listening
for cuckoos which may perchance be cuckooing, or to lions who may
oblige by roaring near the listening microphone, or suchlike noises
of nature must be difficult to arrange and unattractive as a frequent
amusement. There remain only certain possible uses of broadcasting for
blind, lonely, and suffering people. To those I will return.
Most of us have been drawn sooner or later into the possession of some
form of receiving apparatus, and it would be interesting to know just
how many of these sets of apparatus sold are still in use. In Great
Britain, where broadcasting has been centrally organized and where
there is one national licensing system, it should not be difficult
presently to determine the average life of the broadcast listener. I am
inclined to suspect that a very large proportion of the sets sent out
since the beginning must be already broken up or out of order. And that
the life of the ordinary listener is so brief that there may soon be
a grave dearth of listeners. But that may be because I cannot imagine
myself a patient listener even for one day, and I am still more at a
loss to imagine any sort of person becoming addicted to listening-in
as a frequent entertainment. Other people may be less restless. I
quite understand the stage of inauguration and eagerness, the initial
delight of the new toy. And afterwards there may be a kind of struggle
to keep on with a thing that began with so much hope and has given so
much trouble. But sooner or later boredom and disappointment with these
poor torrents of insignificant sounds must ensue. Are there indeed any
indefatigable listeners who have stuck to this amusement since the
beginning? If so, I think they are probably very sedentary persons,
living in badly lit houses or otherwise unable to read, who have never
realized the possibilities of the gramophone and the pianola, and who
have no capacity nor opportunity for thought or conversation.
The rest of the available population is, I should imagine, passing
rapidly through the listener stage from surprise to disillusionment.
When they have flowed past, then I suggest that the whole broadcasting
industry will begin to dry up. The British Government has created an
important salaried official body to preside over the broadcasting
programmes, and it relies upon this service in times of crisis for
the distribution of tendential official information. In the end that
admirable committee may find itself arranging schemes of entertainment
for a phantom army of expiring licences, the last living listeners
having dispersed and gone to other things. The ether will pulsate
unheard with the bedtime talks of uncles who have lost their nephews
and nieces, and “comics” all unaware of the emptiness of their
reception, and the ultimate artfulness of official misinformation will
throb in a void of inattention, as if it were the last of the dinosaurs
calling for its mate.
And there will be about half-a-dozen convenient sinecures more for the
Prime Minister to distribute.
The recent public discussions in the Press about broadcasting
programmes are very significant symptoms. They reveal a widespread
discontent among the present users of receiving sets. The disillusioned
take little part in these debates. The waiters are still holding on
and listening and complaining. Each one suggests a different “ideal
programme.” These ideal programmes recall the first bright stages
of hope. There is still the fancy that busy and eminent people may
be induced to spend half a day preparing and timing and saying over
a measured piece--that any broadcasting official may burke if he
dislikes. There is still the conception of some vast orchestra playing
music to suit every mind and taste simultaneously. There is still the
craving for unsectarian religiosity, for faith in things in general,
combined with faith in nothing in particular. Upon one thing only do
they agree. Every one wants something in vivid contrast to what is
provided.
The transmitting authorities, still unwilling to face the plain
intimations of destiny, are trying all sorts of novelties, nervously
and absurdly. The most delightful of all the recent attempts has been
the thought-transmission experiments from the London centre. This
was really radio-drama reduced to its simplest expression; even the
words and sounds were omitted. It was pure blank listening. Sir Oliver
Lodge cleared his throat and announced the crucial moment. Cloistered
individuals sat and glared at objects and thought about them like
anything. Listeners listened with straining ear-drums and painfully
focussed minds. The poor ether, if it has feelings, must have felt
like a cat harnessed to a cart--a most uncongenial job to put upon
the theoretical vehicle of material vibrations. A hush fell upon the
British Isles until Sir Oliver said “Ahem!” and permitted them to
relax. Then we were to write in what we had thought or seen. The only
really pleasing result of this widely diffused mind strain was that a
lady in Torquay guessed object No. 5 very nearly, when object No. 3
was in the glare of the transmitting souls. The first recorded case of
anticipatory wireless telepathy and clear evidence of the relativity of
time....
But to radio mental nothings in this way was, perhaps, too delicate
a task for the broadcasting, at least as a beginning. Something a
little more material might conceivably have had a better chance of
getting through. Transmitters sitting before steaming plates or other
appetizing objects might more easily have conveyed impressions to
fasting listeners. Perhaps this will be tried later as this restful
custom of listening-in to nothing audible whatever extends.
Under the spell of the radio idea I have been doing my utmost to write
impartial, impersonal, unsectarian, non-tendential, non-controversial,
unprejudiced, kindly things about it, like the stuff its authorities
invite us to transmit. Nevertheless, I am afraid that my own opinion
peeps through, my opinion that the future of broadcasting is like
the future of crossword puzzles and Oxford trousers, a very trivial
future indeed. It will end as a Government job. There is a future for
the wireless news ticker; that is a different proposition altogether.
Yet my discouraging forecast is mingled with regret. There could be
one very fine use made of broadcasting, though I cannot imagine how
it could be put upon a commercially paying footing. It would give the
poorest chance for any Government jobbing; there would be no scope
in it for pushful young men. There are in the world a sad minority
of lonely people, isolated people, endangered helpless people,
sleepless people, suffering people who must lie on their backs,
and who cannot handle books--and there are the blind. Convenient,
portable, and not too noisy listening instruments now exist, and for
this band of exceptional folk I wish there could be a transmission,
day and night--and the slack hours of the night for them are often
more dreadful than the day--of fine, lovely, and heartening music,
beautiful chanting and the reciting of a sort of heroic anthology. The
sturdy will of the race, the courage in the world, could speak to its
faltering sons and daughters. There can be a great hunger for the human
voice. How good for many a tormented spirit to hear in the darkness:
“Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid!”
_3 April, 1927._