George Orwell
As I Please
Tribune,
28 March 1947I have been reading with interest
the February-March bulletin of Mass Observation, which appears just ten years after this
organization first came into being. It is curious to remember with what hostility it was
greeted at the beginning. It was violently attacked in the New Statesman, for
instance, where Mr Stonier declared that the typical Mass Observer would have
elephant ears, a loping walk and a permanent sore eye from looking through
keyholes, or words to that effect. Another attacker was Mr Stephen Spender. But on the
whole the opposition to this or any other kind of social survey comes from people of conservative opinions,
who often seem to be genuinely indignant at the idea of finding out what the big public is
thinking.
If asked why, they generally answer that what is discovered is of
no interest, and that in any case any intelligent person always knows already what are the
main trends of public opinion. Another argument is that social surveys are an interference
with individual liberty and a first step towards totalitarianism. The Daily
Express ran this line for several years and tried to laugh the small social survey
unit instituted by the Ministry of Information out of existence by nicknaming it
Coopers Snoopers. Of course, behind much of this opposition there lies a
well-justified fear of finding that mass sentiment on many subjects is not conservative.
But some people do seem sincerely to feel that it is a bad thing
for the government to know too much about what people are thinking, just as others feel
that it is a kind of presumption when the government tries to educate public opinion.
Actually you cant have democracy unless both processes are at work. Democracy is
only possible when the law-makers and administrators know what the masses want, and what
they can be counted on to understand. If the present Government paid more attention to
this last point, they would word some of their publicity differently. Mass Observation
issued a report last week on the White Paper on the economic situation. They found, as
usual, that the abstract words and phrases which are flung to and fro in official
announcements mean nothing to countless ordinary citizens. Many people are even flummoxed
by the word assets, which is thought to have something to do with
assist!
The Mass Observation Bulletin gives some account of the
methods its investigators use, but does not touch on a very important point, and that is
the manner in which social surveys are financed. Mass Observation itself appears to keep
going in a-hand-to-mouth way by publishing books and by undertaking specific jobs for the
Government or for commercial organizations. Some of its best surveys, such as that dealing
with the birthrate, were carried out for the Advertising Service Guild. The trouble with
this method is that a subject only gets investigated if some large, wealthy organization
happens to be interested in it. An obvious example is antisemitism, which I believe has
never been looked into, or only in a very sketchy way. But antisemitism is only one
variant of the great modern disease of nationalism. We know very
little about the real causes of nationalism, and we might conceivably be on the way
towards curing it if we knew more. But who is sufficiently interested to put up the
thousands of pounds that an exhaustive survey would cost?
For
some weeks there has been correspondence in the Observer about the persistence of
spit and polish in the armed forces. The last issue had a good letter from
someone who signed himself Conscript, describing how he and his comrades were
forced to waste their time in polishing brass, blacking the rubber hoses on stirrup pumps
with boot polish, scraping broom handles with razor blades, and so on. But
Conscript then goes on to say: When an officer (a major) carried out
routine reading of Kings Regulations regarding venereal disease, he did not hesitate
to add: There is nothing to be ashamed of if you have the disease it is quite
natural. But make sure that you report for treatment at once. I must say that
it seems to me strange, amid the other idiocies mentioned, to object to one of the few
sensible things in the army system, i.e. its straightforward attitude towards venereal
disease. We shall never be able to stamp out syphilis and gonorrhoea until the stigma of
sinfulness is removed from them. When full conscription was introduced in the 191418
war it was discovered, if I remember rightly, that nearly half the population suffered or
had suffered from some form of venereal disease, and this frightened the authorities into
taking a few precautions. During the inter-war years the struggle against venereal disease
languished, so far as the civilian population went. There was provision for treatment of
those already infected, but the proposal to set up early treatment centres, as
in the army, was quelled by the puritans. Then came another war, with the increase in
venereal disease that war necessarily causes, and another attempt to deal with the
problem. The Ministry of Health posters are timid enough, but even these would have
provoked an outcry from the pious ones if military necessity had not called them into
being.
You cant deal with these diseases so long as they are
thought of as visitations of God, in a totally different category from all other diseases.
The inevitable result of that is concealment and quack remedies. And it is humbug to say
that clean living is the only real remedy. You are bound to have promiscuity
and prostitution in a society like ours, where people mature sexually at about fifteen and
are discouraged from marrying till they are in their twenties, where conscription and the
need for mobility of labour break up family life, and where young people living in big
towns have no regular way of forming acquaintanceships. It is impossible to solve the
problem by making people more moral, because they wont, within any foreseeable time,
become as moral as all that. Besides, many of the victims of venereal disease are husbands
or wives who have not themselves committed any so-called immoral act. The only sensible
course is to recognize that syphilis and gonorrhoea are merely diseases, more
preventable if not curable than most, and that to suffer from them is not disgraceful. No
doubt the pious ones would squeal. But in doing so they might avow their real motives, and
then we should be a little nearer to wiping out this evil.
For
the last five minutes I have been gazing out of the window into the square, keeping a
sharp look-out for signs of spring. There is a thinnish patch in the clouds with a faint
hint of blue behind it, and on a sycamore tree there are some things that look as if they
might be buds. Otherwise it is still winter. But dont worry! Two days ago, after a
careful search in Hyde Park, I came on a hawthorn bush that was definitely in bud, and
some birds, though not actually singing, were making noises like an orchestra tuning up.
Spring is coming after all, and recent rumours that this was the beginning of another Ice
Age were unfounded. In only three weeks time we shall be listening to the cuckoo,
which usually gives tongue about the fourteenth of April. Another three weeks after that,
and we shall be basking under blue skies, eating ices off barrows and neglecting to lay up
fuel for next winter.
How appropriate the ancient poems in praise of spring have seemed
these last few years! They have a meaning that they did not have in the days when there
was no fuel shortage and you could get almost anything at any time of year. Of all
passages celebrating spring, I think I like best those two stanzas from the beginning of
one of the Robin Hood ballads.
I modernize the spelling:
When
shaws be sheen and swards full fair,
And leaves both large and long,
It is merry walking in the fair forest
To hear the small birds song.
The
woodwele sang and would not cease,
Sitting upon the spray,
So loud he wakened Robin Hood
In the greenwood where he lay.
But what exactly was the woodwele? The Oxford Dictionary seems to suggest that it
was the woodpecker, which is not a notable songster, and I should be interested to know
whether it can be identified with some more probable bird. |