"AMERICAN JOURNEY"

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 22, 26 January 1935, Page 7 (Supplement)

"AMERICAN JOURNEY"

THE LAND AND PEOPLE.

LOYALTY TO PRESIDENT,

TWO DEMOCRACIES,

In Ills recent book, "English Journey, which created wide discussion in England and won the praise of critics and readers in this country, .T. B. Priestley set down liis impressions of social and economic developments in knglantl Now, after a leisurely ramble through the United States, he writes entertainingly of what he finds heie. Mr. Priestley, one of the most distinguished of British novelists, has written sncii hest-sellers as "°5 > „ Companions" and "Angel Pavement. NEW YORK, December 10. These notes are based, of course, on a brief and superficial experience. But they are the notes of an unbiased observer, who for some time now has been paid to notice things. Let us begin with the general appearance of the United States. It does not show as many signs of the depression as I expected it would. When I was here last, the slump had just begun, and I notice a number of comparatively small differences between then and now. Thus, things sepm to be cheaper and people more anxious to have your custom than they were before.

Possibly in my hurried journey across the Continent I have missed the places that have suffered worst, but certainly I have seen remarkably few signs of real distress. I could take you to places in England (and have done in my book "English Journey") that arc a thousand times worse than anything I have seen here, whole districts in our industrial North that have been murdered by the slump.

If their equivalent exist here, I have missed them. Though, mark you, there are regions in the United States that obviously have a wretchedly low standard of living, and apparently that have never known anything else; horrible little towns composed of wooden shacks, roads all mud and ruts, tin cans and the rusted skeletons of Ford cars. Such regions, however, have not been changed by the depression. They were always like that.

Most of the people I have listened to, from New York to Arizona, have a curiously mixed attitude towards the political authorities. First, tlicy have a loyalty to and affection for the President himself. No British statesman commands such loyalty and affection. No member of the,present British Government deserves them.

People give Mr. Roosevelt the credit for making a great creative effort. Our world is in more need of such efforts to-day than it is of anything else, for we have arrived at a time when the organisers of social, economic, and political life- are centuries behind the skilled producers, the engineers, the manufacturers, even the very farmers. England is muddling along fairly successfully at the moment, simply because England is a small, compact, and still very rich country, but no such creative effort as Mr. Roosevelt's is

being made in England, and I have been delighted to discover that he still has his citizcns behind him. Glad-handing Politicians. But along with this personal loyalty to the chief there goes a tremendous suspicion of "the Government." When you are talking in railway dining cars, hotel lounges, and the like, you do not ask a man to define his terms, so that I do not know exactly what is meant by this "Government." It seems to represent an unnamed bunch of extravagant and perhaps crooked politicians, who care about nothing but taking great wads of the taxpayers' money and spending it recklessly.

I have heard a great deal of grumbling on this score; and I have found it difficult to convince my American friends "that even now I -pay more in taxes than they do. But the ordinary American citizen seems to be thoroughly awake to-day to the evils of the "spoils" system, and is tired at least of the loud-mouthed, glad-lianding politician anxious to give out jobs to his pals and to treat public money as if it were something he had won in a sweepstake.

On the other hand, like people in other democratic countries, he still makes the mistake of supposing that politics is, in some mysterious fashion, other people's affair and not his own, of assuming that he is not master in his own country.

It is political words and not political measures that seem to frighten the American. Thus, he will approve of Government action that is really Socialistic in principle, but on the other hand he will still talk of Socialists, Radicals, and "Reds" as if they were strange, horrible monsters, caters of children.

In the same way, though he is peaceably enough inclined himself and only too ready to deplore the war-mongering in Europe he reads about, he talks of "Pacifists" as if they, too, were creatures who ought to be outlawed from decent society. The fact is that he has carried over from the pre-slump period the violent prejudices aroused by these mere names, although actually by this time he himself is probably both a Radical and a Pacifist.

But I for one would never dare to tell him sp to his face. It would be the names themselves, and not the principles suggested by them, that would outrage him. Being a democrat, I like the democracy of America, and prefer it to the social muddle of English life, which is neither a democracy nor an aristocracy, but an uneasy, snobbish mixture of both. I have no patience with some of your writers here who profess a great contempt for democracy and advocate an aristocratic system. These writers, I fancy, assume a little too easily that under an aristocratic system they would be among the aristocrats, and forget that they might be wedged in among the lower classes, touching their caps at the great man's lodge gates. They are like Bernard Shaw, who professes a like contempt for liberty of speech but takes care to go on living in a country where he is allowed to eay what he likes. The Refreshing West. There are, however, two democracies in America, it seems to me. There is the democracy of bad manners and the democracy of good manners. You meet the first chiefly in the cities, and it is not pleasant. It assumes that democracy means that everybody has a right to be rude to everybody else all the time. The "Say, listen, brother" man is typical of these democrats, who appear to suffer from a bad inferiority complex. You seem to find the other democracy, that of easy but good manners, well outside the cities, and perhaps at best in the West. To an Englishman, heartily sick of the uneasy class prejudices and snobberies of his own island,

there is something very refreshing about these Westerners, with their friendly quality, free alike from patronage or servility. Will this real democracy last, or is it merely a lingering relic of eattlepuiiching and prospecting days? Here, anyhow, is the germ of that rlasslcss society, in which men are really free and equal, which most good people would like to see established in the world. "Now, folks," says the guide, "just comc this way, please." It is good to be "folks." No sensible people would over want to be anything but "folks." America must cherish this democracy of good, easy manners, for it is one of her finest possessions. I think the folks in the West are grand folks. In my trip across the States this time I noticed the great differences thqre are in people here. In the big cities you meet fine people, but you also seem to see about the streets 'more shifty-looking men, more potential scoundrels, than you see almost anywhere else in the world. I am quite prepared to believe, as your criminal records would no doubt prove, that most of these fellows are among Europe's fairly recent contributions to your population. Possibly a

very small proportion of them are American-born citizens. But there they are, thousands of complete city rats, and I can well believe that they 'constitute one of your major problems. No wonder you need a police force like an army to cope with their activities, or that* every morning paper tells its tale of horror. Worth Working For. a But away from this scum your people present grand types, and especially—to English eyes —among your hard-working outdoor men, whether they are driving trains or tractors, rounding cattle, or taking their own share in your gigantic engineering feats. These men are finer creatures than their European and they justify a good deal of boasting. They are worth working for, these people, are worth the newest and best deal that can bo given them.

And let me admit this, that during this trip I have met three fellowcountrymen of mine who have settled here; one was a barber, another a clerk, and the third a caterer's manager. And depression or no depression, not one of them had the least desire to return, except for a holiday, to the land of hia birth and of mine. America had done this, that and the other for them, they told me, and they were glad to be over here. You bet!

And now, so that you will not imagine I am simply out to flatter you, let me conclude by remarking that I still think your rooms are too hot, your children too precocious, your cities too noisy, your trains too slow and your automobiles too fast, your make-up too thick, your tobacco too sweet, and your glorious pies all too plentiful and fattening. —(N.A.N. A.)