SOME AMERICAN NOTES OF INTEREST.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3114, 24 April 1922, Page 7

SOME AMERICAN NOTES OF INTEREST.

Sir Philip Gibbs, »well-known war correspondent and English publicist, on a lecturing tour in the United States, has been studying the opinions of many different types of people regarding world affairs and their own. political and economic position as they are affected by world conditions. He has been taking notes and has printed them. Making his first visit to the middle west, he has found things different from what ho had been led to expect them to be. He says that he had been told in Now York “that the middle west stands for a. policy of isolation, and that it is not only indifferent to European affairs, but actually hostile to any co-operation of the United States with other nations for the purpose of straightening out world problems.” He found the exact opposite to be the case, and he writes; — “These business men of the middle west are profoundly conscious that the present depression of trade in grain, in cattle, and in industry, is largely due to the downfall of foreign markets. They are, I am convinced, prepared to back a policy on the part of their leaders, which will make for international peace, first of all, and lead, if possible, to the rapid recovery of foreign markets. I find many times an idealism beyond my expectations. They are thinking naturally of their own interests first, but they express hopes higher than that, and are impatient with the present policy of the Senate and the political leaders, not because they TTave gone too far in handling the international situations, but because they seem to hesitate in taking bolder steps.” One thing that has impressed Sir Philip Gibbs in his journeyings “is the activity of the women in the intellectual leadership of the United States. It is they,” he says, “who are leading most, thrtiking most, perhaps in terms of idealism. Their husbands may smile at them, and go their way. It is the habit of husbands. But their end will be the proof of tlieir teaching and their influence.” * * * * The War Bonus,

The fight over the proposal to grant a bonus to the men of the American Army who took part in the European War was still being fought when the last mail left. Reference to the subject was made in this column a. little while hack, when mention was made of the camapign of anti-bonus propaganda by the powerful Manufacturers’ Association, and how Congress was being bombarded with protests against the measure. Since then the agricultural organisations have entered the field as antagonists, and the whole Republic is being worked up into a state of frenzy upon the subject. The papers are divided upon the question, and not a little bitterness is being introduced into the discussion. On the one side there is a demand to honor the pledge given to tlie men who fought and save the reputation of the Republic. This is replied to with a demand that the advocates of the bonus should find the money or show where it is to be got. That is the root of the trouble—money, the root of all evil. The Treasury, like Mother Hubbard’s cupboard, is bare, and every proposal to raise the required sum by means of taxation at once besets a howl of protest. The passions of the people liable to taxation are inflamed by this sort of thing, which is dug out of a leading article in a New York paper:—“ The soldier bonus, as a bid for votes in the coming election, is the most flagrant and the most wicked assa uR on your pocket-book ever yet made in Congress. . . If Congress had to dig down into its own pocket to find the money for the soldier bonus the soldiers would never get a cent.” A humorous side is being given to the “topic of the time” by all manner of cartoons of more or less merit. Indeed about an equal amount of space is being given to this bonus question as was devoted to laudatory accounts of the American soldiers at the front in France, and that was not stinted by reason of any fear of overdoing the business. In the midst of all this storm the Senate sits inactive, halting between “1 would and I would not.” Threatened by cannon in the shape of votes on either hand, Congress appears to be paralysed by a fear of consequences whichever way it turns. Possibly the nastiest knock the soldiers have received has been administered by Major Parsons, a veteran of the Civil War, aged 88 years. In a letter to a member of Congress he wrote: “To yield under the threats of the veterans of the world war, it seems to me, would be rank cowardice. These healthy and saucy young men should be told: ‘lt is more honorable to work than to loaf.’ ”

The Black Belt Fading. There has been a marked migration of the negro inhabitants from the inhospitable Southern States to the Northern and Western in recent years. At the census of 1920 the total negro population of the United States was 10,463,131, an increase of 1,629,137 m twenty years. Within that period there have I>ecii decreases in the number of the colored people in Mississippi, South Carolina, and Tennessee, while in Michigan, in the North, the number lias nearly Quadrupled, in Illinois and Now York State it has more than doubled, in Ohio it has nearly doubled, and in Pennsylvania there has been an increase of about 128,000. Notwithstanding tliis migratory movement nothwards, the negroes constitute more than half the total population of the Mississippi State and of South Carolina, while in Georgia, Alabama, and Lusiania they are over 37) per cent of the whole population. One authority on the subject—a native of Alabama—ventures the opinion that the day is surely approaching when there will no more be “black counties in the Gulf States. The writer says the negro has no bent for Hide-; pendent farming, and that there is a general movement of the colored race into tbe ctiies and towns, whence they pass northwards and westwards. With all his recollection of the defeat of the Southern States in their rebellion against Lincoln’s emancipation of the slaves policy, this Southern writer says: —“There is to be no such racial conflict, no such catastrophe, no such explosion, as it was predicted by Ur Tocquivillc and feared by Calhoun, would follow emancipation. The safetyvalve was long since opened- by the Civil War; the volume of its discharge was only made greater by that world war of which it' lias been said> that one wholly unlooked-for result has been to reveal tire color line as tlie question of the twentieth century.’ ”

• * * * Prohibition Lowers Mortality Rate. With the lowest mortality figures on record staring them in the face, United States doctors and hygiene experts are closely examining the question: “What has prohibition contributed toward bettering public health and prolonging life?” “There is,” says a New York daily, “an unmistakable trend of opinion in medical circles, an opinion partly supported by statistics, that in certain specific cases prohibition has markedly cut down mortality figures, and a presumption that it has helped lower the general death rate.” That it has lowered mortality from diseases in which liquor plays a part is freely admitted, but some health authorities concur in the opinion that two years form a period much too short in which to arrive at a positive conclusion. There are s]

too many factors involved in the extremely complex problem of public health to be able to isolate prohibition and say definitely what good it has done. The Life Extension Institute of New York has made an investigation of the subject and finds on the whole that prohibition seems to have aid'ed public health and to have lengthened life, though the medical man at the head of the institute said that it is too early to form a definite conclusion. He added : —“All that we can say at the present moment is that there is no reason to believe that prohibition has had other than a favorable influence on the public health. After 5000 years of indulgence society is entitlde to a few years’ fair trial of abstinence, especially as insurance experience shows an excess death rat© of 86 per cent, among average/ so-called moderate drinkers.” Insurance actuaries, as a rule, assume that prohibition is lengthening human life and bettering public health, and are basing their calculations upon that assumption. Summing up, the paper says:—“ Experts, therefore, look favorably upon the idea that, prohibition will assist in the prolongation of life and in. bettering health generally, but it is assumed that probably ten years must pass before anything like accurate findings can be had.”