THE NATION OF "KNOCKERS"

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 248, 19 October 1928, Page 6

THE NATION OF "KNOCKERS"

According to certain American sages mankind is divided into two classes—the "boosters" and the "knockers"—an assertion which loses something of its novelty when the two terms are translated into the more familiar optimists and pessimists (says the "Manchester Guardian"). And according to Mr. Otto Kahn, the American banker, who is in London at the moment, the inhabitants of this island are fixed incurably among the "The people of this country seem as pessimistic as ever about everything in general, but then they would not be true Britishers if they were not." It might have been feared that ail the influx of American ideas and methods would obliterate this ancient distinction, and that rosecoloured spectacles had set in for ever with the advent of horn rims. But no—the sceptical and intractable melancholy of the English race is proof against all blandishments; all the boosters and all the Babbitts, all the movements and maxims and summer schools and courses in culture and efficiency, cannot shake our inveterate (and somewhat successful) habit of making the best of a thoroughly bad job. We are at once the world's wonder and its warning—the nation of knockers who are never knocked out. It must be so, for Mr. Kahn'a tribute virtually admits it—and is there not a slight touch of envious admiration about his admission?