MIDDLE WEST AMERICA.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3138, 9 October 1922, Page 2

MIDDLE WEST AMERICA.

(By Lieut,-Colonel Repington.) A visit to Washington whets one's appetite for travelling in America. One finds at Washington many interesting people and many interesting ideas; kind, charming, hospitable people, and ideas which take one out of the European ruck, but one is afflicted ail the time, as one is at New York, by the sense that one is living in a, world of its own that is not completely American. There are too many Irish, Poles, Russians, Germans, and Jews in New York to allow us to feel ourselves in a distinctly American environment, while at Washington there is something of the starched feeling belonging to every official world. One longs to get into a large car, and, after travelling a few hundred miles, to get out and go up to the nearest people and ask them what they are doing, and thinking, and! feeling. So, soon after the Washington Conference, I went off to the Middle West to try to find out what sort or people the real Americans were after all. tor somewhere in this vast territory I imagined that I should find plenty of them and have a glimpse of their minds. It was no good going there without some ostensible object, because one would not in that way meet enough people or be brought into close contact with all the grades and gradations of folk. So I invented a few subjects for lectures, and that gave me a sort of fictitious status. I chanced to hit upon two subjects which the people happened to take an interest in, and they would never let me talk of anything else. These subjects were the State of Europe and the Washington Conference. The latter enabled me to feet the pulse of Americans about thenown affairs, and the former showed me the state of feeling in America about the old Continent which seems, when one is in America, to be as far removed from one as a distant planet. So I moved about from St. Louis to Boston and from Buffalo to the South, visiting numerous towns, small and great, talking in theatres, town halls, churches, conventicles, at city clubs, ladies' clubs, university clubs, and so forth, as well as at private houses, rotary conventions, 20th century clubs, and such charming meeting-places as the New Arts Club, where so many English lecturers have been given a send-off on their careers of lecturing crime. I do not suppose that there is any better or quicker method of getting to know the people of America. They have a plavful habit, especially at the city clubs,' of asking one a series of very pertinent questions when one has done talking. It is the best of the fun. They ask all sorts of questions. What do you think about the American Senate'o What is vour view about the Panama Canal tolls? Ts the British Government frightened of Mr Gandhi? . And so forth. But one soon learns that if one can turn the laugh against the questioner one has one's audience with one. The Americans have the habit of attending lectures. They like to study everyone whose name they know. Busy people themselves, they have scant leisure for travel or study, and like to be informed. They upoil one for any other audience. They ask one to speak for an hour, an hour and a half, or two hours. They never seeni to tire. They are the most courteous, attentive, and' friendly of audiences, and their questions usually display a lively interest in the world's affairs'. No people could be more hospitable, more anxious to enable one to see everything in or near their town, and more eager to help one in every possible way. One must, on these tours, be immune from fatigue. One must do with very little sleep. Everywhere there are people to meet one, all perfect strangers, but as kindly as if they had known one all one's life. One's time is mapped out by them, and one must place oneself in their hands. It is worth doing. The memory comes back to us afterwards of a thousand acts of kindness and thoughtfulness, amongst all sorts of men and women, that can never be repaid. But they certainly do make us exceedingly grateful to them, and there is real regret in the parting from new friends so kindly, so generous, and so warm-hearted. We probably all know a number of rich Americans, men and women, who spend much of their time' in Loudon, Paris, and the Riviera, and have lelarnt the gentle art of sauntering, having nothing to do. It is with astonishment that one finds no such 1 people in America. The fact seems to be that if one wants to loaf one must go to Europe, for in America there is no one to loaf with. It is considered almost a disgrace in America to have nothing to do. All the men, rich or poor, work all day. Business is the play of America. Success 1 in business is the universal aim, not money-making, though it sonietimes comes to the same thing. But there is a distinction, and one must realise it. There are few of our agreeable sports and pastimes in America. Golf has conic to stay, but it only affects a very limited class. There are few occupations for idle men, and it i« not wonderful when there is none idle. Even the millionaires work as hard as the rest, and frequently die in harness, though able to afford themselves every luxury in the world' and to five where they please. The son of the millionaire, if be does not leave his country to loaf abroad, takes up l some, almost any, profession, and works at it as hard as he can. No one seems to mind what business it is. There have been great prizes in American life. There are fewer now. But every real hard 1 worker can still make his 1 pile. The country is so big. openings are still so numerous, there is so much scope for brains, activity, and' intelligence, and there is still such a youthful enthusiasm! pervading everywhere, that the future seems bright, and optimism refuses to surrender its rights even in the most depressing circumstances. So all the men work, but one of the results is that there is no leisured class to be found anywhere, and to' this fact one must attribute the result that America., for her popular tion and intelligence,, has not given to art and letters, to erudition and culture, anything like her proper share. The man goes to work early. Luncheon is not a meal, but a particular aspect of the day's work, for is usually takes the form of a talk with business men. So in the evening, when a man comes home, be has had quite enough for the (lav. and few turn to books. ft may, and very probably will be, that women wilt take a leading part, in art and letters in America. T noticed the last month when J was there no' fewer than five articles by ladies in the leading American review. Ladies' clubs play an increasingly notable part in American life, and in the great cities they include all the best known women in society. 1 cannot explain what is meant by the word' "society" in most of the large American towns. T do not know, and cannot imagine, who gets into it or hew. Tt is one of the mysteries. Seemingly, in the minor towns,

great success in business lifts one out of one of the' strata of .life and places one in a. higher. Then one lives with one's successful friends in a set of some fifty people or so, and' apparently one has to desert one's old friends in the process. This is so> antagonistic to the natural American that I suppose I must be wrong. It is a particular feature of American life that one must be an American to comprehend l . I give it up. I am only sure that the women of America are the only people with spare time on their hands, and if this goes' on I imagine that they will have much to say in the development of American literature hereafter.