Singing Waters

by Ann Bridge

  “That an American sees this—the perils of uncontrolled industrialism. For the whole Balkans, just now, this question is crucial.”

  “Some Americans see things,” Warren said cheerfully. “But why do you say that this question of industrialisation is crucial for the Balkans right now? Do you think they consciously want their standard of living raised, at this moment?”

  “That a little, yes; perhaps. But the real reason is other, I think. They have come to feel that only industrialised countries can have an efficient armaments industry, and they all want armaments industries, to be able to protect themselves from aggression, and to fight with a chance of winning. This is partly true, of course.”

  “I would say it was a hundred per cent true,” Warren stated. “What’s the catch in it?”

  “That armaments alone are not enough, without the fighting spirit; just as the bravest army is ham-strung without modern equipment. That is the fallacy. There are countries which have some of the best-equipped armies in Europe, and armaments industries so large that they can export arms, even—but it does not follow that if it came to the point, they would fight.”

  “That’s very interesting,” Warren said. “But most of these fellows down here have the fighting spirit all right—a darn sight too much of it!”

  “That is true,” Larsen said. “And it connects with the other fallacy, that any of these small countries could resist an aggressor alone. Their only hope of military security would lie in co-operation, plus armaments. But they find co-operation much more difficult than anything else. And they do not see the fallacies, so the desire for industrialisation increases.”

  “Do you think it’s inevitable, then?”

  “To some extent. I think some improvement in their conditions even most desirable, if it could be so controlled that they would get the benefits of better economic conditions without the evils of industrialisation.”

  “But is that possible?” Langdon asked. “Industrialisation seems to me to run along the same old lines everywhere.”

  “But of course it is possible, Mr. Langdon. It is only that it has never been attempted, except in Hungary, a little. The industrial revolution occurred first in England, a small crowded island, and because the English are unimaginative and have little aesthetic consciousness, they made every possible mistake. England set a disastrous pattern for industrialisation, and all over the world, every country, so far, has followed that pattern—even your own America, with its vast spaces, and for all the lip-service done there to individualism.”

  “I’m glad you admit the British started it,” Warren grinned.

  “Yes, but they had this excuse—industrialisation was then a novelty, an experiment, and the consequences were not foreseen. Now they are known, so for other countries—you will pardon me—there is no such excuse. Britain is now trying to coax her people back onto the land; then why take them off it here? These people’s houses are rough, but they are not slums, and there is no slum mentality—there are no bums and hobos in the Balkans. Everyone knows where he belongs.”

  “We Have just aped the British right enough,” Warren said. “But how would you apply all this, down here?”

  “Create light industries, and disperse them, Mr. Langdon. Have one factory in each village, as they are beginning to do in Hungary: a sugar factory here, a starch factory there; a boot factory, a leather factory. Let the people get the economic benefits of factory wages, and yet enjoy the values of life in a small village, on the land.”

  “That would add to your freight charges.”

  “It would. But village workers could afford to take lower wages, because of their fields and gardens, their geese and pigs and cows; so your costs would not suffer in the end, if you could keep out the paid agitators, who cannot see that high wages alone do not mean prosperity. And if such a distribution of industry did shave a fraction off profits, is it not now time that the human race started to consider what production is for? Should we not think in terms of human well-being as well as in terms of shareholders? In terms of men and women? Would it not pay a State better to have a population of people like the mountaineers here, rather than of slum-dwellers? The English are now paying in taxation, and spending on social services, far more than the fraction of profits they might have lost by a dispersal of their industry.”

  Warren got quite excited by all this. He sat forward and smote his knee.

  “Mr. Larsen, you’ve got something there! I believe that is the solution. I believe that would work! But what about agriculture, down here? These countries are primarily agricultural—in Bulgaria they are pretty good at it. Can’t you tie that in, some way?”

  “But certainly. It must be tied in. In Yugo-Slavia they have already started to use their coal and iron and pigs, in combination, for a canning industry. Pork Goulasch, tinned hams. Already these are not so bad—they could be better. And it will pay them much more to produce articles of world export value than to sell their pigs as live or dead meat to Germany. At present, all these countries are economically in the pocket of Germany.”

  “That’s right enough for Yugo, her canning,” Warren said; “but these poor hicks produce pretty erratically. Some of their stuff’s O.K., but some is very low-grade.”

  “Yes, what is needed is grading—under Government authority. See what Bulgaria has done with her white grapes. By having them properly graded and packed, she has captured the Eastern European market, in a few years. There must be grading; the purchaser must be able to count on a second and third consignment being of the same quality as the first—otherwise the price will remain low. Roumania produces wonderful clover and beetroot seed, but it is ungraded, so she gets about one-third of what it is worth; her beans go to Belgium to be graded! Economically, this is insane.”

  “I’ll say it’s insane! But I don’t see yet just how you’re going to get round it. These people are so backward and so individualistic, and always at each other’s throats.”

  “Yes. It would take time and patience. These countries would need some financial assistance, and a great deal of unselfish and very wise advice. They would accept both. But it would not be necessary to change the methods of agriculture much; there is no need to go through such an agonising and disruptive process as setting up collective farms on the Russian model. Some improvements, yes. But if each State enforced grading for its export surplus, and consumed the lower-grade stuff at home, and if, further, some sort of inter-state Trading Commission negotiated all the sales for the whole of the Balkans, Balkan produce would take a decent place in world markets, at decent prices. They would not be, as now they are, economically at the mercy of one country.”

  Warren smoked and thought.

  “Economic co-operation’s easier than political, I guess,” he said. “It might work, even down here. What else?” Warren was one of those unusual people who did not always want to put forward his own ideas, competitively, in conversation; if the other person’s notions were interesting, he wanted to hear them.

  “Two things—communications, and electric power. Balkan communications are puerile, at present. They should be made widespread, and good. And roads should cross frontiers, instead of avoiding them as a matter of policy. Also here, the possibilities of hydro-electric power are almost unlimited; and that means, or can mean, clean cities and factories. With hydroelectric power, there need never be a Black-Country, as in the English Midlands.” Larsen paused, but as the other merely nodded, he went on: “With the potential water-power that exists all through the Balkans, each peasant’s house could have also piped water and electric light, as they do in Switzerland; this comfort, this convenience, women could have here as there, without altering their wholesome peasant mode of life. There is nothing to prevent this type of development but the current superstition that city life is better than country life, and that to mass human beings together makes in some way for greater efficiency than leaving them to work in small groups. Pure superstition, this!”

  Wa
rren laughed again at his energy.

  “You wouldn’t find so many people to agree with you there.”

  “No, I should not. What is needed is for a prophet to arise and preach the gospel of individuality, real individuality, of the Good Life in the modern world, with industry and mechanisation strictly subordinated to human values, that is to say, to moral and aesthetic values. If such an idea were made politically fashionable, all these small nations would follow suit. As it is, they seek to follow the English or American pattern.”

  “Which is worst?”

  “You forgive me if I say, the American—because mechanisation has gone further there, and in America there are no such countervailing influences as monarchy, as aristocracy, and the country life as an ideal. The retired English industrialist, what does he do? He buys a country house and sets up as a country gentleman—and the little shopkeeper retires to a country villa and digs his garden. In America, this is not an ideal.”

  “It is not—you’re right there. A summer home on Cape Cod or in Vermont is about as far as it goes,” Warren observed. “There wouldn’t be much sympathy over with us for your ideal of village life. We don’t have villages; we call them small towns anyway. I think we’re pretty urban-minded. I’m not sure that I myself quite understand why you’re so keen on villages—I mean, I see the results down here, but I don’t feel sure why village life produce those results.”

  Larsen looked at him.

  “This you will find absurd, what I say,” he said—“but it is true. The village life is a full life, because it is interesting. The full life depends, not on the range of experience but on the intensity of the interest, the emotion involved, and on its being a personal interest. Life at second-hand, through the film, say, is wide in range, but shallow; not full. Such a full life these Balkan villagers enjoy who live in familiar communities and know their neighbours. I would leave them there, sustained by their traditions, but with their methods of husbandry slowly improving, with their return for their labour slowly rising, and with the woman’s burden eased by water and light in the home. One can have these,” Larsen said quaintly, “without worshipping showers and Victrolas, if one preserves one’s sense of values. But humanity at present has lost its sense of values. And for this, I chiefly blame advertising. In the Balkans of which I dream—a dream which could come true—” and now he spoke with immense energy—“I would forbid advertising by law!”

  Warren laughed.

  “Why that last?”

  “Because advertising confuses values, Mr. Langdon. By appealing either to fear, or to vanity, or to covetousness, it very skilfully insinuates false values. You are a better and more civilised citizen if you have a Victrola; more men will love you if you use Palm-Olive; if you do not use someone’s tooth-paste you will have halitosis! Everyone in the Balkans has halitosis, because they eat strong-tasting food; but they do not have stomach ulcers or nervous ailments, and as no one minds their breath, they suffer no embarrassment. Advertisement,” he went on, “is a purely parasitic activity; it forces goods for which there is no real need or demand on a foolish or even a reluctant public, always by appealing to their lower instincts.” He leaned forward in his chair, his ugly intelligent face serious, earnest—Warren found him very appealing. “May I speak freely to you? For America is the paradise of advertisers.”

  “Go right ahead,” Warren told him.

  “What has two generations of high-pressure salesmanship and scientific advertising done to your people, Mr. Langdon? Do you realise, I wonder?”

  “It’s made them rich,” Warren said, smiling. “But what else? I daresay it’s done a lot that I don’t see—one doesn’t notice what’s familiar. Go ahead and tell me—I want to hear. You’ve been to the States, I imagine, and seen us with your old wise European eyes.” He was not ironic, and Larsen knew that he was not.

  “Yes, I have. Thank you. This is important, because of the great economic power of your country. I do not seek to provoke, or be offensive,” Larsen said, pleasing the Bostonian more and more by the naturalness of his honesty. “It is because of the importance.”

  “O.K. Well go ahead and tell me,” Warren repeated.

  “Mr. Langdon, advertisement has destroyed the power of discrimination with your people—who are by nature shrewd and careful, for the most part. ‘It’s the name that counts.’ ‘You can rely on the brand’—these are the slogans. The Frenchwoman, in a shop, pulls the sheet, the stocking—tests the weave and the strength and the quality; she examines, because she knows. The American woman does not know, any more; and often she does not go to the shop; she buys by mail order a product whose name she has seen in glossy pages of magazines, or has heard on the radio. This is bad for her; she abdicates her human privilege of personal judgment; she is now at the mercy of clever and unscrupulous commercial suggestion. But this is not without effect on her other activities—and on those of her husband. They do not, either of them, listen to or read the news and form their own opinions, as the European bourgeoise does; they read their favourite commentator, and take his views on events; they switch off the news, and switch on to Mr. Kaltenborn or Mr. Swing. These are good clever men; they are honest; they do their best. But man is a thinking animal—and if he lets even Mr. Kaltenborn think for him, he is foregoing his natural rights.”

  Warren laughed.

  “I see you know us pretty well, Mr. Larsen,” he said. “Carry on. I hadn’t thought of that effect on our people.”

  “You are very kind. That—kindness—is a thing your people have not lost! But all this is also bad for the commercial men. In Europe, a product must be good, or it will not sell in competition with other products; with you, it is enough to say that it is good, often enough and sufficiently loudly. The keenest competition is not in the making of things but in the advertising of them! When one of your soap manufacturers decides to launch a new product, what does he do? He does not find something new, or better—no, he has a Board Meeting to invent a new name!”

  Warren laughed loudly.

  “You do know the works,” he said. “G’won.”

  “When he has chosen ‘FLUFFOX, THE SUDSY SOAP’, Larsen pursued, grinning amiably, “he buys radio time and advertising space, hires a broadcaster with a name or someone to write a ‘soap opera’, and arranges a new packing. Only then does he begin to think of his product, which will differ little from the old one. I do not know exactly what are the relative costs of pushing an article and producing it, in America today—would you say fifty-fifty?”

  “Around that. Maybe nearer sixty-forty. You see it’s no good producing a thing unless you sell it, and selling is a terribly expensive business—you’re quite right.”

  Larsen looked at him.

  “Have you ever seen the advertisement of the Rolls-Royce car?” he asked. “It is small, like a post-card, and it just says—‘Rolls-Royce, the best car in the world’. Yet I understand that these cars sell well,” he said blandly.

  The American laughed again.

  “Fair enough. They do. They don’t need a two-page spread.”

  “But why not?”

  “Because everyone who knows about cars just knows that the Rolls is the best, car in the world. That’s all right, I give you that. That particular luxury product sells itself. But I’m not sure”—Warren was frowning and peering out at the sunny garden now—“that you could have got our tremendous expansion of industry in the U.S. without advertising. And I wonder if the effects are so bad as you think.”

  “I may of course be mistaken. You think it does not matter if people cease to discriminate, to judge for themselves? I should have feared that this might put them at the mercy, not only of clever salesmen, but of political charlatans also. I mean this—if ‘talking up’ an inferior article of commerce causes it to sell as well as a better one, do not words tend to become more important than facts? This seems to me a real danger. Are you quite satisfied with the political judgment of your compatriots?” the Swede asked, more b
landly than ever.

  “No. I’m not. No one could be. It’s immature and unstable; and we are very ignorant. A French peasant will give you shrewder views on the current world situation than most Congressmen,” Warren said, his lined face looking worried. “But we’re a young nation, remember.”

  Larsen smiled, but said nothing. The American smiled too.

  “Thank you for not coming out with Oscar Wilde’s crack about the oldest thing in America being her theory of her youth,” he said. “I guess it was in your mind.” Larsen continued to smile—it had been—but he said nothing.

  “I’ll have to think this through,” Warren went on. “It’s a new idea to me; one accepts, in the strangest way, the conventions in which one is brought up. But I can see that for the Balkans of your dream—and it’s a pretty good dream—it would be as well to cut out advertising. I’m sure you’re right about tradition, too, being the thing to keep here. We haven’t it, and we tend to write it off as fettering. But it isn’t necessarily fettering—I’ve learned that. For old nations, it’s the roots to the tree. It nourishes. If you cut off the roots you cut off the new growth; if you denounce the past you kill the future. I guess that’s what’s wrong with Russia. Sooner or later, she’ll have to resume her past.” He smiled. “And we’ll have to grow one! But now—won’t you dine with us, tonight? My sister would be delighted.”

  Larsen did dine with them, and Miss Anne was delighted with him. Her definiteness responded to his. Warren introduced him as “a friend of Gloire’s”, and Larsen very politely corrected him with—“an acquaintance, please, Mr. Langdon”. She liked his intelligence, his directness, and he was agreeably well-informed. After dinner they sat again in the garden-room, among the sweet scents moving on the light air, while the colours of the flowers outside became more poignant as the dusk dimmed them. And Warren raised the question of advertising again. His hyper-conscientious Bostonian mind had been working and worrying on the view presented by the Swede all the evening, and he spoke of it at some length.