The Questioning Reader

The late Harold Laski in Liberty and the Modern State (p. 168) tells us that in “our own day it would not be an unfair description of education to define it as the art which teaches men to be deceived by the printed word.” Extend the aphorism to the spoken word. Sobald man spricht beginnt man schon zu irren. And so to deceive! After Hitler the Germans should remember their own maxim again! Broadcasting, television, preaching, lecturing, and political parrotry mislead even more than print. Pleasant voice, winning manner, a sparkle in the eye, a flash in the phrase, mask many a glib bunkum‐stuffer. The flying air‐borne sentence is less easy to interrogate than the ink‐bound paragraph. Does not Dr. Johnson somewhere growl that he could see quicker than he could hear?