A CONTRAST

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 121, 25 May 1931, Page 9

A CONTRAST

STATES AND BRITAIN

FACING THE DEPRESSION

(From "The Post's" Representative.) NEW YORK, 29th April. How do England and America react to the prevailing depression? "England ping her hopes to the old elements of character, quality, business good faith, personal economy, looking at the facts, and so on. America relies on organisation, new methods, the urge to spend, professional optimism, the psychology of mass suggestion." Thus is tho question answered in a thought-provoking review by James Truslow Adams in the "New York Times." Underlying tbo English attitude Mr. Adams finds a philosophic calm, whereas under the American attitude- is a certain nervous apprehension. In the fundamental quality of courage he discerns no difference between the two peoples. Ho asks his readers, howover, not to be led astray by the Englishman's right to growl, to say his country is going, ami gone, to the dogs, becauso in his heart the Englishman believes his country always loses every battle but tho lasf. In America there is much _ ffilk of depression. Newspapers, morning and evening, arc full of it, like doctors' bulletins issued hourly regarding the pulse and temperature of the national patient. There are innumerable committees for slump curing. In clubs and at dinners it is the prevailing topic. In England, on tho other hand, t hoy have the, happy knack of dropping business worries lit tho close of tho office'day. Nor is this becauso they do not ("aro. They fire not fiddling while Homo is burning; thoy aro men who fire deeply anxious, nevertheless. THE DOLE COMMENDED. The writer commends, tho English social insurance- scheme, commonly known as tho dole, abused though it is. .By its means tho problem has beon removed from tho spUero of voluntary committees of citizens to that of Stato functioning as impersonal as the collection of Customs duties. The Englishman is not given to forming committees. ITn prefers to work out Iho problem himself quietly, ralher than to

hand it on to committees, chambers of I commerce, and all the machinery so familiar in America. Acknowledging that it is bad form socially in England to talk "shop" or business, Mr. Adams comments on the absolute disappearance of the stock market as ho passes from New York to London. "In a London drawingroom ono would no more talk about one's stocks than one's stomach. The former is a subject to bo discussed with your lawyer or broker, tbo latter with your doctor." The Englishman prefers to dine at homo, rather than in a restaurant, and to work as an individual rather than as a committee; this is a sign of the greater individualism of tho English mind, as compared with the growing collectivism of the American. "It is impossible- to think of an Englishman, when business is bad, trying to make it better by sticking a button on his coat, with the motto, 'Business is good,' as is perfectly typical of the American. . . That Englishmen are not ignorant of psychology is shown by the enormously successful visit of the Prince of Wales to solicit South American trade, travelling by passenger ship, rail, and aeroplane, as contrasted with President Hoover's 'goodwill' mission before taking offiec, when he visited our suspicious and very touchy neighbours in a battleship."