Surrealist Landscape
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pANTOMIMES were providing a form of surrealist entertainment long before that particular epithet was invented. The people, the animals, even the objects upon the stage are more symbols than matter of fact. They represent unexpressed or forgotten loves and hates. As befits symbols, they are continually changing into something else. The pumpkin becomes a fairy coach; the bean grows to a tree overnight; a kiss changes the beast into a handsome prince; and another kiss wakes the princess from the trance of a hundred years. Even the actors can be said to lead more than a double life, when the principal boy is a girl, and his mother is Arthur Askey.
No more suitable subject could be found for a pantomime than road haulage, a surrealist industry if ever there was one. Much that is said about it during the year, although not always very apt at the time, would be accepted as highly seasonable just at present. We have all become familiar in Parliament and at the cinema, if not so much in real life, with the wicked road haulage uncle, who casts his poor drivers out like babes into the jungle of the roads, in order to make his reprehensible fortune. As in the pantomime, the wicked haulier is never so well off as his misdeeds ought to make him. But, as any 'textbook on the subject will tell you, it is never the function of surrealism to be logical.
Only the other week, I was commenting on the element of pantomime in the . story of Derek Wiscombe, who expected his horse and cart to be transformed into a lorry by the wand of the traffic court fairy. As it happened, he had neglected to learn the correct spells, a fatal mistake on the part of any young man who finds himself involved in a fairy tale. Perhaps he was lucky not to be turned into a civil servant, or trapped in Aladdin's cave with the onus of proof like .a millstone round his neck.
More recently, circumstances almost compelled Maj.-Gen. G. N. Russell, chairman of British Road Services, to give a sustained pantomime performance, in the shape of what was a 'well-constructed Henry Spurrier Memorial Lecture, on the subject of "Transport and the Common Weal."
Crossing the Red Sea
One particularly delightful touch is provided by the comment that, with the development of the railways, "the canals were literally thrown aside." The images this conjures up, including that of Col. Nasser, and of the Israelites crossing the Red Sea in Cecil 13. de Mille's latest film, are surrealism at its best—or worst.
What II have in mind, however, is not so much individual items such as this, as the general theme of Gen. Russell's paper. He is, of course, a member of the Eastern Area Board of the British Transport Commission, as well as head of B.R.S. As such, he has an interest both in the well-being of road haulage and in the idea, which has had several advocates already, that the ultimate aim should be, not to develop one form of transport, but to build up a system in which all forms can take their proper place.
The difficulty, which he acknowledges but cannot completely overcome, arises from the continuing political uncertainty. The problem of ownership of the transport industry remains unsettled, and Gen. Russell, by virtue of his appointments, stands almost at the dead centre of the problem. He has to be all things to all men, whether he likes it or not. 'His private wish may be that B.R.S. should remain as they are now, and compete fairly with independent operators. It would be, as the phrase goes, more than his job is worth to say so in plain language_ He is equally precluded from expressing the opinion that road haulage should be renationalized, An ambiguous situation of this kind is the stuff of which pantomimes are made. When Little Red Riding Hood, archetype of all the dumb blondes in history, trips through the forest with a basket of groceries, or subsidies, for her ailing grandmother, she does not seem very upset at meeting a wolf, nor at the questions he asks. It is only later, when he disguises himself, that he is recognized, and it is only at that point that he attacks the girl he could easily have eaten at their first encounter.
I am not suggesting any close resemblance between Gen. Russell and the Big Bad Wolf, or that he is disposed to gobble up independent operators and reach out for a subsidy at the same moment. His situation is analagous rather than precisely similar. He clearly recognizes that he is in a world of pantomime, but grappling with a real-life commercial problem. The Memorial Lecture is an attempt to impose commonsense on a surrealist landscape.
Key Sentence
In the end, he is driven to a statement that, from the point of view of its place and context within the lecture,
might well be considered as the key sentence. The ideal framework," he says, "would be so devised as to give us the best of all worlds--complementary forms of transport operating with a minimum of wasteful duplication, and sufficient competition to produce maximum efficiency, co-operating where this improves the standard of facilities provided, and the whole system permeated with the traditions of a public service."
Gen. Russell is not being serious here, but I ,feel sure there are many people who would fail to detect the undertone of irony, and would nod their heads in complete agreement. There could even come a suggestion that the sentence be carved above the door of the, Ivory Tower.
As a servant of the Commission, Gun. Russell perhaps feels it his duty to defend the railways. He does so by the rather roundabout method of suggesting that, if the railways did not exist, it would be necessary to invent them, chiefly because steel wheels on steel rails reduce friction to a minimum. Under cover of this fantasy, he proceeds to abolish marshalling yards, to eliminate local services, whether for goods or passengers, and to transfer to road the clutter of traffic "which no-one would have dreamt of sending by rail had the internal-combustion engine been invented first." A more convincing condemnation of the railways could hardly have been devised.
In fact, it seemslvery unlikely that if up to the presdnt day there were no railways in Britain, their construction "would be put in hand with all speed," as Gen. Russell insinuates. Apart from the fact that road transport would have solved long ago whatever problems the absence of railways posed, no Government would be likely to sanction the enormous expenditure that would be required.
Still in the pantomime tradition, Gen. Russell has managed, within the compass of a few thousand words, to include a reference to practically every aspect of inland transport. One's sok regret is that, with the help of the words printed on a screen, he did not persuade the Institute of Transport to join him in a rousing chorus of "The Railroad Goes Through the Middle of the House."