Читать книгу THE ART OF PUBLIC SPEAKING - J. BERG ESENWEIN DALE CARNAGEY - Страница 23

1. Select from any source several sentences suitable for speaking aloud;

deliver them first in the manner condemned in this chapter, and second

with due regard for emphasis toward the close of each sentence.

2. Put into about one hundred words your impression of the effect

produced.

3. Tell of any peculiar methods you may have observed or heard of by

which speakers have sought to aid their powers of concentration, such as

looking fixedly at a blank spot in the ceiling, or twisting a watch

charm.

4. What effect do such habits have on the audience?

5. What relation does pause bear to concentration?

6. Tell why concentration naturally helps a speaker to change pitch,

tempo, and emphasis.

7. Read the following selection through to get its meaning and spirit

clearly in your mind. Then read it aloud, concentrating solely on the

thought that you are expressing--do not trouble about the sentence or

thought that is coming. Half the troubles of mankind arise from

anticipating trials that never occur. Avoid this in speaking. Make the

end of your sentences just as strong as the beginning. _CONCENTRATE._

_WAR!_

The last of the savage instincts is war. The cave man's club

made law and procured food. Might decreed right. Warriors were

saviours.

In Nazareth a carpenter laid down the saw and preached the

brotherhood of man. Twelve centuries afterwards his followers

marched to the Holy Land to destroy all who differed with them

in the worship of the God of Love. Triumphantly they wrote "In

Solomon's Porch and in his temple our men rode in the blood of

the Saracens up to the knees of their horses."

History is an appalling tale of war. In the seventeenth century

Germany, France, Sweden, and Spain warred for thirty years. At

Magdeburg 30,000 out of 36,000 were killed regardless of sex or

age. In Germany schools were closed for a third of a century,

homes burned, women outraged, towns demolished, and the untilled

land became a wilderness.

Two-thirds of Germany's property was destroyed and 18,000,000 of

her citizens were killed, because men quarrelled about the way

to glorify "The Prince of Peace." Marching through rain and

snow, sleeping on the ground, eating stale food or starving,

contracting diseases and facing guns that fire six hundred times

a minute, for fifty cents a day--this is the soldier's life.

At the window sits the widowed mother crying. Little children

with tearful faces pressed against the pane watch and wait.

Their means of livelihood, their home, their happiness is gone.

Fatherless children, broken-hearted women, sick, disabled and

dead men--this is the wage of war.

We spend more money preparing men to kill each other than we do

in teaching them to live. We spend more money building one

battleship than in the annual maintenance of all our state

universities. The financial loss resulting from destroying one

another's homes in the civil war would have built 15,000,000

houses, each costing $2,000. We pray for love but prepare for

hate. We preach peace but equip for war.

Were half the power that fills the world with terror,

Were half the wealth bestowed on camp and court

Given to redeem this world from error,

There would be no need of arsenal and fort.

War only defers a question. No issue will ever really be settled

until it is settled rightly. Like rival "gun gangs" in a back

alley, the nations of the world, through the bloody ages, have

fought over their differences. Denver cannot fight Chicago and

Iowa cannot fight Ohio. Why should Germany be permitted to fight

France, or Bulgaria fight Turkey?

When mankind rises above creeds, colors and countries, when we

are citizens, not of a nation, but of the world, the armies and

navies of the earth will constitute an international police

force to preserve the peace and the dove will take the eagle's

place.

Our differences will be settled by an international court with

the power to enforce its mandates. In times of peace prepare for

peace. The wages of war are the wages of sin, and the "wages of

sin is death."

--_Editorial by D.C., Leslie's Weekly; used by permission._