THINGS SEEN

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 51, 1 March 1930, Page 21

THINGS SEEN

AN AUSTRALIAN IN AMERICA

"Through the States with the Seeing Eye." eßy Richard J. A. Berry, M.D., F.K.C.S. London: Simpkiu, Marshall. (Through Angus and liobertsou.)

Professor Berry, of Melbourne University, recently visited Now York as the guest of the 'Rockefeller Foundation, and while in the United States made an extended tour, embracing Washington, Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, and Detroit, also Nashville, Term., and St. Louis, Mo. The professor learned much about America at first hand, but he also acknowledges his indebtedness for some information on its people and their institutions from the works, of 11. L. Mencken and Andre Siegfried. Ho was struck by the diversity of nationalities which constituted so large a proportion of the American people, and the outstanding qualities of those of British stock. He was impressed (aud not altogether favourably) by the polyglot character of its citizens. Yet Professor Berry admits with evident pleasure that '' there is yet another America, an altogether delightful America—the one it was iudeed my privilege to meet. The America of the charming, genial host, the man of education, the competent administrator, the apostle of efficiency in word and thought and deed—in a word, the backbone of the States, and, to the •world at large, an almost unknown America. Its virtues are not blazoned forth on the myriad flashing signs of 'the Great White Way.' nor is it boomed by either Press or politician, and yet it is the real heart and brain and soul of the States, and the man who does not know it does not know the States, and never will. This, the'real America, is indeed a very likeable land, one of which I have the kindliest recdllections, and one I hope it may be your good fortune to know." The writer describes New York City as it impresses the foreigner, and does not add much to what has already been mado known by. countless visitors who have set down their feelings, but he does so in a chatty and agreeable manner. His observations on American hotels do not add much to what has already been told'about them. It is on the thorny subject of the working of Prohibition that he is most interesting and apparently entirely unprejudiced..

Those who have not been in the States and have "dry" sympathies, he writes, will probably declare that it (Prohibition) is,"worth every penny of it." But those w-ho have studied this question at first hand, he adds, ,may well ask if, in spite of tho unexampled patience of the American people toward high-handed police measures, meddlesome regulations, wholesale spying, aud the complete failure of Prohibition to prohibit, tho undertaking is really not beyond'the strength of the American or any other Government?

lie admits that "Prohibition has done at least one national service to the land of its birth. It has closed the saloon, and closed it for good and all"; and every American, "wet" or "dry," Democrat or Eepublican, brain or manual worker, who discussed this problem with him regarded that as all to tho good, aud did not want it back. "But these self-same American citizens (he writes) also assured me that anyone cauld get liquor in the States if they knew where, when, and how to look for it. Wherever these mysterious places are, they are certainly not visible,to tho casual visitor, who, whatever his own views may be, must content himself solely and always with the great national drink of America—iced water.''

Professor Berry learned" from eminent, responsible, and reputable American citizens—"and these are indeed some of the most delightful of men-— that the real danger of American Prohibition lies in the fact that the 18th Amendment has bred a contempt for the law of the land.

"It cannot be too strongly emphasised, "he writes, "that civilisation all the world over depends for its continued, existence on the legal embodiment of the Christian principle of doing unto others as you would be done by—that is, on an incorrupt interpretation of the laws which alone render safe any modern society or civilisation. Without that, man's habits, customs, usages, and principles would quickly revert to those of the primitive ■ caveman, where the only law was that of the strong, and the devil took care of the hindmost— Visually the woman." He is most empNjatic on the point that Prohibition had bred in hitherto reputable and lawabiding citizens contempt or, at least, disrespect for the law, and he supports his assertion by statements of Americans themselves.

In Washington Professor Berry, found that lobbying had been raised to the dignity of an exact science. On the surface ho found the city of Washington, D.C., "fair and beautiful —and (ho remarks) so are the sepulchres in the Scriptures." His little book is a series of most entertaining and instructive talks, originally broadcasted, on the United States and Americans, and its interest is enhanced by fine photographs taken in some of the cities in tho professor's itinerary. '