VISIT TO AMERICA

Evening Post, Volume CIV, Issue 25, 29 July 1922, Page 16

VISIT TO AMERICA

MISS ROYDEN ON HER TRIP, KNOTTY PROBLEMS APPRECIATION OF LABTSST'CS. \ (rnosi our own cokkebpondent.) LONDON, 30th May. To a Guildhouse audience who listened with wrapt attention, Miss Maude Hoyden gave an interesting outline of her recent visit to America and some of the impressions she had formecl. Speaking from her capacious pulpit— about the size of a stage bos—banked with cushions of oriental stripes, and placed high above the platform, she spoke with vigour on many points—the colour problem, Prohibition, and America's position, regarding the League, of Nations. The main purport of her visit was to attend the Y.W.C.A. Convention at Arkansas (pronounced Arkazisaw; on this pome she had very definite information, for an American to whom the query had been put replied, " Well, in this country we are none too sure about name pronunciations' generally, but. we are all quite agreed about this one.") The second object, not less important, was a great desire to see things from the American point of view for a shorb time. Miss Royden wanted to sec how things on this side looked to people over there. She said she had often tried very hard to understand the view of the multi-millionaire. But the chief difficulty proved to bo that all Americans she met wanted to understand England's point of view. " I had not set foot in New York," she said, " before my cabin was filled with a. surging flood of newspaper people who wanted to know my views on Prohihition, whether I thought women should smoke, my opinion on dancing, and what did I think about flappers! I never saw a reporter in America who did not ask me what J thought about flappers. You have no idea of tho enormous importance of the flapper in America. Americans are tremendously interested in the English point of view. ' Are your people pre-millenarians or post-millenarians?' asked one interviewer. When I said there was no, millenarians either pre or post, the surprised ejaculation- was, ' From what ' earthly paradise do you come? It must be rather like Heaven at the Guildhouse.' " One millenarian was stated to have moved a Bill in the Senate against evolution. PULSATING HOPE. While Miss Royden did not find America a very musical country—though one or two great composers had emerged from among the negroes, the white American was not a_musical person—she did find there was an extraordinary feeling of hope among all the people, arid that quality was the first cpe that struck her. Hope had become* almost the most important of all the.'virtues ';■ everyone took. hope for granted, believing that it was a normal condition, while despair was extraordinary. They , believed .that, no, problem was too great for solution. It was, therefore, a refreshing atmosphere. Everything in America was very great—its problems, its distances. Indeed, the siae of the • country was preposterous—these ought not to be anything so vast! One of the great difficulties was the immigration problem. „ America now is refusing to admit more than,a certain number of would-be settlers per month. Surplus numbers were sent to Ellis Island to await their turn—& method which inflicted great hardship. Though, the policy might seem selfish, _it was a sheer 'impossibility for' America to absorb so many different peoples from innumerable countries, md yet retain its own characteristics. ' America had a population twice that of England, and it was receiving emigrants at the rate or 2,000,000 every year. America had a right to ask herself at what rate could she.absorb strains c/f blood from outside and yet remain a nation at all. Many Americans. did not believe in the melt-ing-pot theory, and said that many of the immigrants remained alien.' One had tp consider whether America was justified in takiiig a long view on this matter. ,

The whole iolour problem for the American was how to keep his race pure. In Miss Eoydfin's judgment there is not in all the world a more heart-rending problem than that of the position of the eleven million negroes in the States. She deprecated the hasty judgment of America's attitude on this matter. It was pointed, out to her that in every town they .passed there was a little group of / squalid shanties ("Nigger Town"), each a little slum. She found that it was impossible to stay in the same hotel with coloured delegates, and that if tiiey had shared a meal with a coloured delegate they might have been broken up by the Xli Klux Klan. It was considered an incredibly daring thing that a white woman should speak on the same platform as a bishop of. negro blood, but of fair complexion, who had been invited to .address them. They dared not offer him even a cup of coffee. These tilings mado her realise that in the Sisuthern States the problem was not being handled'in the right way. The negroes could not be sent back; there were' 11,000,000 of them and they did not want to go. ' It was a problem how far it was possible for races so different to co-operate, and, above all, to intermar^ Miss Hoyden had met Americans who believed that in intermarriage was the „ right solution of the problem; she did" not know, but it was conceivable that such might be the right solution; she" alwtiys had felt it to be a problem on whiph the world needed a.great deal move light and scientific knowledge than it yet had. If America would apply a little research into' this racial problem she would be doing herself and the world great good, for it is going to'be th> Eroblein of the world in the future. To liss Iloyden tho most pathetic and tragic thing was the humility with which the negroes regarded themselves, and she was very much impressed when she was told by a coloured bishop that in all their song, literature, sacred or secular, there was,not one single word of bitterness, rancour, or revenge. .The .tragedy of ages was written on their faces. Peo-^ pie should ask themselves whether they were^right to speak of tho negro as inferior to the white race, for the problem I was one that affected the whole world. Great Britain had to face the colour pro- ' blem ih India, but it should be with j more wisdom than was uone in South

Africa. THE PEACE AND THE LEAGUE OP * . NATIONS. In the refusal of America to come into tiie League of Nations, everyone had felt disappointed. In the past, America had never touched European politics; she had "always kept herself to herself. During the war she broke that great tradition. In regard to the length.of time she was in the war, it was only some nine months, but it really was a great triumph of idealism that America came into the war at all. America came into the war with the same spirit that had at the outset animated all the other Allies, but she had only nine months of the fight; she had not lost her idealism and had,' not been long enough in the conflict to realise how .other nations had lost something of theirs. She was just s^. the very west of it i (iho believed Unit thio vvocfd Has going to bo bettgrj Then at |Vcjj«

sailles she watched the drawing up of the thing that we called thp peace. Woodrow Wilson took back the League of Nations idea; he had now become an object of absolute hate; and because he insisted that this plan was to be accepted without discussion just ■as it was, America refused to have anything to do with it: The first men she met in New York were filled with the sense that their country had failed to realise its responsibilities ; and they described their country's withdrawal from Old World politics as a great blunder and a moral error.

" I have evidence," said Miss Royden, " that America means ultimately to come into the League of Nations. The changed attitude of. the American towards the League of Nations surprised me and greatly encouraged me. The logic iof events will force America into the League, and many people are wishing and longing for it, though possibly the name may have to be changed. Washington was only the first of a series of conferences that will draw America into the outside world. Lady Astor was a most wonderful ambassador from England to America. There were some things I could say because I am English, and she could not; but there were far more things she could say because she is* an American. Lady Astor, at a great meeting, said: ' There is one subject on which I am told I must not speak. Well, lam going to speak on jt. lam told that if II speak on it I must do so under my breath.' Then, putting both hands to, her mouth to form a sort of trumpet, she shouted, ' It's the ; League of Nations.' The response was tremendous. It was like throwing a stone into a pond. Nobody ' dared to speak. Lady Astor, with that gallant charm and courage, threw the stone into the pond, agitating it, and now everybody in America is talking of the League of .Nations." As for Prohibition, Miss Royden could not speak as an authority, but it was much discussed in America. She was'not going to give a pronounced judgment on an experiment so new, over so vast an area like the U.S.A. In some quarters it was stated to be completely ineffective; that everyone was able to get much more liquor than one wanted; others said drugs were a substitute. Some people said the motive bringing it about was sordid; others that it was in order to secure greater efficiency, or that money was behind it all. Drunkenness made inefficient workers. There were, however, two facts on which every person agreed—first, that Prohibition had been carried by an enormous majority; and, secondly, that there was no possibility of its being repealed. She protested with all her power against the ill-conditioned and ill-timed jests that English people perpetually mate about it in America. It was an uneasy''conscience that made. the English people laugh at Prohibition, because in the fourth year of the war we could not refrain from using valuable foodstuffs for the 'production of beer. If Prohibition proyed a success in America, she believed that the United States, having found a way to unite the initiative and courage of the West with the abstinence and self-disci-pline of the East, would become the greatest country in the world. Miss Royden was struck by the extent to which .motor-cars are used and by whom. At one house a whole park of cars was drawn up, arid when asked if there was some kind of party in preparation, the answer was in the negative. The cars—all Fords? costing £15 apiece in good second-hand quality— were the " bicycles " of the workmen painting the house ! A good second-hand Ford cost £15—the price of a bicycle. Miss Royden got into disgrace because, by special invitation, she preached to a negro congregation. /