LUBRICATION OF LIFE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 305, 26 December 1930, Page 6

LUBRICATION OF LIFE.

"In running a car we know well enough that if we forget the 1 oil we shall burn out the bearings. We Americans too often forget the oil in our own daily contacts everywhere, and we wear ourselves out without reason." Thus James Truslow Adams, distinguished historian, in an article in the "Yale Review." His title, "Kensington Gardens and Lafayette Square," indicates his passage from leisurely English life, via the New York circus, to the comparative haven of Washington. Mr. Adams' conclusions'' will distress those Americans to whom the superiority of the United States is one of the things one does not question (says the "Christian Science Monitor"). Living for a year in a flat in Kensington Gardens, he found that he. had dope more work in quantity, and his editors and publishers told him better in quality, than he ever did in a year at home. Yet..l have actually worked only about seven and a half months in all, and in the other five or so, at intervals, have wandered over France, Belgium, Holland, Germany, Austria, ► Italy, Switzerland, Czecho-Slovakia, Denmark and Sweden. Ideas have flowed into my mind as never before, and although I have travelled for nearly five months and written over 250,000 words in the other seven, the interesting point is that I have discovered that I have had the time and the inclination for all sorts of reading I could not "get in" in New York.

Mr. Adams assigns two reasons why living in Europe is, for him, richer than living in America. One is the lack of friction in daily life in Europe; the other is :the sense of historical continuity, which has been snapped in American thought. In England he found every human contact —with subway guard, shop clerk, taxi driver or hostess —moving as on a perfect hearing. Returning to New York, he was compelled to waste much time going over needless ground because of removals, mergers and similar organisation details of business houses. It took weeks to gather a few men together in the evening—they "had no time." Neither, he discovered, had they any place to rest, to be quiet; nor did he hear among them, except for specialists, talk of music, art or literature.

Yet New York was not America, he realised. So lie fled to Washington, city of beauty. Lafayette Square was a great relief from New York. Monticello was even more so. But, as he points.out, civilised man feels the need of intellectual and artistic stimuli—concerts, plays, art exhibitions. These can be found in any European capital without the hubbub of New York; but ndt, he feels, in the minor American cities. To the main indictment of Mr. Adams, we'suspect, Americans, or at least New Yorkers, must plead guilty. And the clamour of New York tends to extend more and more to other American cities. The slightest delay on the part of the motorist ahead of us starts our horn scolding. We must hurry on, at,the cost of whatever loss of manners and dignity, in order to be in a position to hurry on to the next place. . But while living is on the whole more simple, possibly more • beautiful in Europe, not all of America is as yet quite so noisy as New York. Perhaps if Mr. Adams would explore farther he might find more agreeable havens for those months which he spends in America. Dwellers in many communities, even cities of size and cultural advantage, are heeding his counsel. Not only are they remembering the "oil" of kindly human contacts; they are exploring ways to achieve quietude without somnolency in the United States.