It seems , then , not unnecessary to restate the obvious .sx In support of the belief that the modern phase of human history is unprecedented it is enough to point to the machine .sx The machine , in the first place , has brought about change in habit and the circumstances of life at a rate for which we have no parallel .sx The effects of such change may be studied in Middletown , a remarkable work of anthropology , dealing ( I am afraid it is not superfluous to say ) with a typical community of the Middle West .sx There we see in detail how the automobile ( to take one instance ) has , in a few years , radically affected religion , broken up the family , and revolutionised social custom .sx Change has been so catastrophic that the generations find it hard to adjust themselves to each other , and parents are helpless to deal with their children .sx It seems unlikely that the conditions of life can be transformed in this way without some injury to the standard of living ( to wrest the phrase from the economist) :sx improvisation can hardly replace the delicate traditional adjustments , the mature , inherited codes of habit and valuation , without severe loss , and loss that may be more than temporary .sx It is a breach in continuity that threatens :sx what has been inadvertently dropped may be irrecoverable or forgotten .sx To this someone will reply that Middletown is America and not England .sx And it is true that in America change has been more rapid , and its effects have been intensified by the fusion of peoples .sx But the same processes are at work in England and the western world generally , and at an acceleration .sx It is a commonplace that we are being Americanised , but again a commonplace that seems , as a rule , to carry little understanding with it .sx Americanisation is often spoken of as if it were something of which the United States are guilty .sx But it is something from which Lord Melchett , our " British-speaking " champion , will not save us even if he succeeds in rallying us to meet that American enterprise which he fears , " may cause us to lose a great structure of self-governing brotherhoods whose common existence is of infinite importance to the future continuance of the Anglo-Saxon race , and of the gravest import to the development of all that seems best in our modern civilisation .sx " For those who are most defiant of America do not propose to reverse the processes consequent upon the machine .sx We are to have greater efficiency , better salesmanship , and more mass-production and standardisation .sx Now , if the worst effects of mass-production and standardisation were represented by Woolworth's there would be no need to despair .sx But there are effects that touch the life of the community more seriously .sx When we consider , for instance , the processes of mass-production and standardisation in the form .sx represented by the Press , it becomes obviously of sinister significance that they should be accompanied by a process of levelling-down .sx Of Lord Northcliffe , Mr. Hamilton Fyfe , his admiring biographer , tells us ( Northcliffe :sx an Intimate Biography , p. 270 ) :sx Two pages later we are told :sx " Giving the public what it wants , " is , clearly , a modest way of putting it .sx Lord Northcliffe showed people what they wanted , and showed the Best People that they wanted the same as the rest .sx It is enough by way of commentary on the phrase to refer to the history of the newspaper press during the last half-century :sx a history of which the last notable event is the surrender of the Daily Herald to the operation of that " psychological Gresham Law " which Mr. Norman Angell notes :sx All this , again , is commonplace , but commonplace , again , on which it seems necessary to insist .sx For the same " psychological Gresham Law " has a much wider application than the newspaper press .sx It applies even more disastrously to the films :sx more disastrously , because the films have a so much more potent influence .sx They provide now the main .sx form of recreation in the civilised world ; and they involve surrender , under conditions of hypnotic receptivity , to the cheapest emotional appeals , appeals the more insidious because they are associated with a compellingly vivid illusion of actual life .sx It would be difficult to dispute that the result must be serious damage to the " standard of living " ( to use the phrase as before) .sx All this seems so obvious that one is diffident about insisting on it .sx And yet people will reply by adducing the attempts that have been made to use the film as a serious medium of art .sx Just as , when broadcasting is in question , they will point out that they have heard good music broadcasted and intelligent lectures .sx The standardising influence of broadcasting hardly admits of doubt , but since there is here no Hollywood engaged in purely commercial exploitation the levelling-down is not so obvious .sx But perhaps it will not be disputed that broadcasting , like the films , is in practice mainly .sx a means of passive diversion , and that it tends to make active recreation , especially active use of the mind , more difficult .sx And such agencies are only a beginning .sx The near future holds rapid developments in store .sx Contemplating that deliberate exploitation of the cheap response which characterises our civilisation we may say that a new factor in history is an unprecedented use of applied psychology .sx This might be thought to flatter Hollywood , but , even so , there can be no room for doubt when we consider advertising , and the progress it has made in two or three decades .sx ( And " advertising " may be taken to cover a great deal more than comes formally under that head .sx ) " It ought to be plain even to the inexperienced , " writes an authority , Mr. Gilbert Russell ( in Advertisement Writing ) , " that successful copywriting depends upon insight into people's minds :sx not into individual minds , mark , but into the way average people think and act , and the way they react to suggestions of various kinds .sx " And again :sx " Advertising is becoming increasingly exact every day .sx Where instinct used to be enough , it is being replaced by inquiry .sx Advertising men nowadays don't say , ` The public will buy this article from such and such a motive ' :sx they employ what is called market research to find out the buying motives , as exactly as time and money and opportunity permit , from the public itself .sx " So , as another authority , Mr. Harold Herd , Principal of the Regent Institute , says ( Bigger Results from Advertising ) :sx " Now that advertising is more and more recruiting the best brains of the country we may look forward to increasingly scientific direction of this great public force .sx " Mr. Gilbert Russell , who includes in his list of books for " A Copy Writer's Bookshelf " the works of Shakespeare , the Bible , The Forsyte Saga , The Oxford Book of English Verse , Fiery Particles by C.. E. Montague and Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch's .sx The Art of Writing , tells us that :sx The influence of such skill is to be seen in contemporary fiction .sx For if , as Mr. Thomas Russell ( author of " What did you do in the Great War , daddy ?sx " ) , tells us , " English is the best language in the world for advertising , " advertising is doing a great deal for English .sx It is carrying on the work begun by Mr. Rudyard Kipling , and , where certain important parts of the vocabulary are concerned , making things more difficult for the fastidious .sx For what is taking place is not something that affects only the environment of culture , stops short , as it were , at the periphery .sx This should be obvious , but it does not appear to be so to many who would recognise the account I have given above as matter of commonplace .sx Even those who would agree that there has been an overthrow of standards , that authority has disappeared , and that the currency has been debased and inflated , do not often seem to realise what the catastrophe portends .sx My aim is to bring this home , if possible , by means of a little concrete evidence .sx I hope , at any rate , to avert the charge of extravagant pessimism .sx For consider , to begin with , Mr. Arnold Bennett .sx The history of how the author of The Old Wives' Tale has since used his creative talents I will not dwell upon further than to suggest that such a history would have been impossible in any other age .sx It is Mr. Arnold Bennett , the arbiter of taste , that I have chiefly in mind .sx In this capacity too he has a history .sx If one reads the articles which he contributed to the New Age twenty years ago ( they are reprinted in Books and Authors ) it is to break into admiring comment again and again .sx It is , for instance , impossible not to applaud when he is impudent about the Professors :sx Yes , it is impossible not to applaud .sx And yet there is something in the manner well , twenty years later we find it more pronounced :sx When I try to comment on the manner of this I can only murmur :sx " Matthew Arnold could have done it .sx " It is , of course , not merely manner :sx the Man from the North brought something more fundamental with him .sx There is an ominous note in the first passage I quoted :sx " It simply made creative artists .sx laugh .sx They know .sx " Mr. Bennett is a creative artist , and Mr. Bennett knows .sx And for some years now Mr. Bennett has been the most powerful maker of literary reputations in England .sx To compute how many bad books a year , on the average , Mr. Bennett has turned into literature would hardly be worth the labour .sx It is enough to instance some of his achievements and to quote some of his pontifical utterances from the Evening Standard .sx Here is the typical achievement :sx Mr. Arnold Bennett made in this way Jew Suss .sx He also made , I understand , The Bridge of San Luis Rey ; for , though he saw through the academic critics , he takes readily to Academy art .sx But his critical prowess is best exhibited by quotation from the Evening Standard :sx Mr. Bennett , we perceive , is a judge of poetry as well as of the novel :sx he can distinguish .sx He is adequate to the subtle complexities of Miss Sitwell , but he will stand no nonsense from Mr. Eliot .sx And he has no misconception about the kind of success that alone can justify a poet :sx No , it was not merely a manner that Mr. Bennett brought with him from the Five Towns .sx And it is not merely expression that one finds so gross in his critical vocabulary :sx " Value for money " ; " let there be no mistake about it , this is a big book " ; " a high class poet " ; " .sx .. I enjoyed reading Creative Writing .sx It is full of chunks of horse-sense about writing .sx " But Mr. Bennett is capable of modesty :sx it has occurred to him , for instance , to be modest about his qualifications for judging poetry .sx And his modesty is , if possible , even more damning than his assurance .sx He writes in Journal , 1929 :sx Mr. Bennett will not understand what is meant by saying that this would-be confession is , instead , self-betrayal :sx so complete is his ignorance about poetry .sx How is it that he can go on exposing himself in this way without becoming a by-word and a laughing-stock ?sx ( For the author of The Old Wives' Tale is a public figure , and differs in this from the minor pontiffs who compete with him in the Sunday papers and elsewhere .sx ) It is that there is no longer an informed and cultivated public .sx If there is no public to break into a roar of laughter when Mr. Bennett tells us that R. H. Mottram , like James Joyce , is a genius , or that D. H. Lawrence and R. H. Mottram ( poor Mr. Mottram !sx ) are the two real British geniuses of the new age , how should there be a public to appreciate Mr. Bennett's modesty about poetry ?sx ( For fiction , as we all know , is read and enjoyed .sx ) Why should Mr. Bennett's pontifications make a stir when Mr. J. C. Squire , specialist in poetry and " himself a poet , " can , in prefacing one of the best-known anthologies of modern verse ( Selections from Modern Poets ) , write :sx and Mr. Harold Monro , even more a specialist in poetry and also " himself a poet , " in the Introduction to Twentieth Century Poetry :sx