ENGLAND FROM OUTSIDE

Evening Star, Issue 14512, 2 November 1910, Page 5

ENGLAND FROM OUTSIDE

It is always interesting to get an outside view of the place one lives in, and American and colonial visitors are always ready to oblige the Londoner in that respect. The speeches at the dinner of the Atlantic Union ibis week were in the form of impressions of the Old Country as seen by men and women from overseas. An American (Mrs Oakley) was impressed with the increasing haste and pressure of London life. Even the Ixmdon policeman, now, as ever, the adoration of the world, seems to have less time than formerly to act as the guide, philosopher, and friend of the bewildered visitor. Mr* Oakley noted also that Londoners were taking to the drinking of iced water, \\hile people in the States were heme warned to give up the habit, because Full many a man, both young and old, Has gone to his sarcophagus Tli rough pouring water icy cold Down his warm oesophagus. Mr Booth (Melbourne) was greatly impressed with the homeliness and friendliness of London, an impression which was deepened the more closely he came in contact with the people in their own home*. Mr Van Siyke (New York) regarded London as the epitome of all the lights and shades of modem civilisation, and the consummation of a. thousand years of human evolution all focussed in one dazzling point. He waa greatly impressed also by the healthy, insidious, and unspent force with whicli Britain is permeating and Anglicising the more distant parts of the earth. Never was there a time when it was more necessary for the English-speaking communities to hold together, when competition not only in commerce but in armaments was so great. If only they would support one another they could and would secure the peace of the world. Mr Gentliores (Cape Town) said his most cherished recollection of this country always would be connected with his life and work at the University of Oxford, whicli, so far from being the home of lost causes, always kept abreast of modem thought, invention, and science, though unfortunately it lacked the funds necessary for its proper equipment in this respect. Ho also greatly admired the liigh standard of political morality in this country and its parliamentary life, in which there was nothing in the nature of “ graft.” The Rev. A. H. Allen, sjieaking with forty years’ experience of England, entirely failed to detect any signs of decadence or stagnation. With all the agitation that was going on in the world of thought, he saw in this country more progress, better care for the poor, the sick, and the suffering, and above all the growth of a truer religious feeling, Hum in manyothci parts of the world. At the same Him there was one thing that he could not understand here —namely, the feeling of hostility on the part of many Englishmen towards their cousins on the northern shores of Europe, and the otecs&ion that they were Ixmnd to come into armed conflict at no distant date. Professor Fairclough (California) also remarked that he entirely failed to see why people in this _ country should regard as inevitable a conflict with Germany, who had very little to gain and very much to lose by going to war with England, for if she did she would not only have the Britons from overseas and the people of British origin in the United States flocking to Hie standard of the Mother Country, but Russia, France, and the various little Kingdoms by which she was surrounded rising up against her. In such circumstances as these surely it must be to the interest of Germany to maintain friendly relations with the Anglo-Saxon race.—London correspondent, September 23.