AMERICA TODAY

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 75, 30 March 1939, Page 18

AMERICA TODAY

THROUGH EWGUSH EYES

A COUNTRY OF EXTREMES

"An Englishman looks at America" was the subject of an address delivered at a meeting yesterday afternoon of the Wellington branch of the League of Nations Union by Professor L. M. Lipson, the young Englishman -who has recently been appointed to the chair of political science at Victoria University College.

The professor spent several years studying in America and his address was based on his own observations. America, he said, was in a way a country of extremes. It was so vast that it presented extremes of every sort as well as extremes of climate. For squalor and degradation he had seen no equal anywhere, and the luxury and wealth that also existed provided an appalling contrast. Americans were a humane and kindly people who were profoundly shocked by the reports of the bombings of civilians and the persecution of individuals in Europe. Yet they themselves were capable of extraordinary violence. An expression of this violence was the terrible acts of lynching which happened all too frequently in the Southern States. ' These lynchings were an amazing display of brute passion' in people who were normally cultured and fine.

The Englishman, said the professor, was prone to look down on the AmeriIcan from the point of view of culture, jyet he had no grounds for doing so. Americans loved the same literature, their operas and symphony orchestras were among the best in the world, and j their art galleries were very fine, j Fundamentally America was still similar to the Mother Country. Her legal structure was permeated with English concepts and she had the same ideas of liberty and justice. Her Constitution, however, was a written one whilst England's was unwritten and more a matter of customs and traditions. TRADITION TO INNOVATE. The people of the United States, said the speaker, had a passion for legislation, but man could not be made moral by Act of Parliament. He quoted a notice he had. seen at an American university—"As from next Monday the following regulation will be a tradition"—and went ,on to say that in America the tradition was to innovate, npt to emulate as in older countries. In England class distinctions were mainly based on an aristocratic background, but in America class distinctions were based mainly !on wealth and were far more mobile than those based on birth. WOMEN MORE EMANCIPATED. Professor Lipson said that the women were far more emancipated in America than in England. They had gained their equality with men and were keeping it. He thought the men and women had far more respect for one another than in England, and said that an American woman was not expected to give up her job when she married.

He gave his views of the Government of the United States which he said was now one of the best-run of the democracies. He had a word of praise for the American journalist, saying that he was a past master at coining a pithy phrase, and he gave it as his opinion that in England far too many excellent plays did not survive the censorship of the Lord Chamberlain, while in-America, where it was possible to present amusing satires of prominent people, the stage was an important force in the life of the country. .' He concluded his speech by saymg that co-operation with America, was a pre-requisite to world peace. Mr. W. B. Matheson made a short speech thanking Professor Lipson for his address.