THE ENGLISH TYPE.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXX, Issue 3452, 17 February 1912, Page 3

THE ENGLISH TYPE.

THE STRONGEST INFLUENCE IN LG ROPE.

(Ily H. Hamilton Fyfe, in the “Daily . Mail.”)' • Whenever 1 hear people saying that England’s day is over I ask them whether they travel much abroad. I find as a rule,' that- they have never been outside their own country. If they had, they, would revise their opinion. They would discover that the influence of England is stronger in Europe than it lias ever been before. In these days, when dfstance has been abolished, the fashions.of one country are the fashions of all. Nations are no longer ignorant of one another’s habits. We have ceased to believe that the Frenchman lives on frogs. The French have abandoned the idea that our favorite oath is “Rosbif!” and that we make a practice.of selling our wives. Nations have ceased to regard their own ways as the only right ways, and all other peoples’ ways as ridiculous.. If they see something they like they adopt- it. Very striking is the number o fillings English which hove been adopted by other nations during the last few years. Everywhere our language is being learnt as part of the necessary equipment of educated men and women. Although German tends ti> i-.-come the business tongue of Europe, directly the business man gets outside Europe he finds English indispensable, . It is spoken over the whole American Continent, throughout Australia, in South and Central Africa, in India, and the Far East. In Germany and the North of Europe English is a regular school subject, not taitght in a dead, perfunctory, Ollendorffian manner, but so as to enable those who learn it' both to read and speak. I have often .met Germans and Swedes and Russians and Austrians who talk English fluently and correctly without ever having been in England. Further, they fall very soon into English ways : and, if they live in England, are. often anxious to-be taken for natives. A clever German woman marr’ied to an Englishman has in one of her novels hit oil very neatly this foible of her country people domiciled among

the conquest of game. English games have made rapid conquest everywhere. Football is played all over Europe. So is lawn tennis. Golf is gaining ground, in France especially. Bridge, which started its career in England, has become a universal card-game. Foreign, cavalry officers long to spend a winter in England for hunting; and when they have had this.delightful experience they talk of it with enthusiasm all their lives. England, again, sots more social fashions than any other country. Five o’clock tea has been widely adopted; so has our custom of dressing for dinner. Germans especially are becoming punctilious on tin's point, and no Frenchman aspiring to lie considered a “clubman” would appear after eight o'clock in any costume but a “smoking” which means a dinner-jacket, what Americans call a “Tuxedo.” The type of foreigner who used to loaf about hotel gardens all day and wear the same suit of clothes (probably black, with a large flowing tie) from breakfast till bedtime has disappeared. His place has been taken In- an athletic, active young man who is eager to be taking exercise, who wears flannels or knickerbockers, and who at evening feels the need of a change into something rather more formal and “correct.” It is this widespread adoption of our habits, carrying with it as a natural consequence imitation of our manner of dress, that accounts for the surprising frequency on the Continent of the English type of man. If our women’s fashions are set by Paris or Vienna, it is we who now dictate the sty-jo ot men’s dress almost all over the world. And it is not only the style of English dress which is copied, hut also the appearance generally of what we call our “publicschool men.” Not many years ago an Englishman could be ‘ picked out at once among a crowd of young Frenchmen or Germans or Italians. Nowadays, at first glance, they all look very much alike. They not only reproduce our clean-shaven cheeks and chins. oUr neatly cropped heads of hair, our broadshouldered carriage, our , well-cut but exceedingly “quiet” and even sombre clothes. They admire us so much that they adopt, so far as Nature will allow them, the public-school manner as well. They aim at being reserved, brief of speech; unemotional. They would rather miss their dinner than their morning tub. To be regarded as “good sportsmen” when they play games is one of their highest ambitions. A TYPE TO BE PROUD OF. A Little. Englander, who declares that England’s day as a world-Powev is over (the wish being parent to the thought), would very likely cons 1 tier me oonteraptible for being proud < f this prevalence of the “Eugb-li tyj o " Pride will continueHo be my feeling all. the same. Not merely a vamgloiious satisfaction that it is the English type which prevails and not some other, but a genuine gladness that we have been able to offer the-world an example, which is - worth following. Ido not suggest that the “English type” is perfect. We have much to leant from the French in' the way of'culture, from the Germans in the field of study, and so on. But I do believe that, taken all round, the English type is the best- for the conditions of the world of to-day. . It is a conviction of this truth which accounts for the English, type’s victory abroad. Several Germans of good, position, husbands and wives, were talking education with one or two English people, hotel acquaintances.. Three German couples said they meant to send their sons to English public schools. '' ‘This

astonished the Britons, who, from having the superiority ,of German education continually preached at them, had at last accented it as a ffict. The Gorman exp.Jned their re.., 1 ms. “O'-ir schools,” they said, “stuff boys with learning which they soon forget; overstrain them, leave them no freedom, teach thorn to rely upon authority and the time-table. We want our sons to learn to be men, to rely upon themselves, to be able to act in emergencies upon their own judgment. We want character-training rather than mindstuffing, That we can get in England Therefore our sons shall go there.” Those German parents saw it would be a great mistake to suppose that the English type is differentiated simply by appearances. That fresh, clean, alert bearing would have little value if it were merely an outside polish. But it is far more than that, No amount of polishing, indeed, could produce it from outside. It must come from within. . It is an outward, visible sign of the inward character—a character which at home seldom reveals itself in action, hut which comes out at once when difficulties have to be faced, whether oh a farnn ill Rhodesia or in an Indian district; on the Canadian prairie or the sand of the Sudan. This old European world with its softness and luxury, its over-cultivated taste and effeminate will, its shrinking from any conditions which call for endurance and 'decision—in this world the English type seems out of place. But in ..the* new lands where the Future lies for all of us (the Germans recognise that as fully as we do) it is this type which is wanted, which is even indispensable. The type which asks nothing better than to ppg away steadily at some difficult task. Which suffices for itself even when it scarcely sees a white man for months at a time. Which can keep its head both in prosperity and when things go ill. 'Which by patience and courage wins new countries over to civilisation, lint never talks about it, never even see ills to think about it. iust does it because it is all in the day’s work. So long as England can continue to produce this type, her day will not pass. her. influence will not decline. If by some miracle her politicians could be persuaded so to school the masses—first in class-room and playground, later in drill-yard and barrack-square— as to bring. them nearer to the spirit of the public school, then England would lie irresistible.