KNOWING A COUNTRY

Evening Star, Issue 23352, 23 August 1939, Page 9

KNOWING A COUNTRY

TAXI DRIVERS AN AID TYPICAL OF THEIR LANDS Observers who travel about Europe interviewing head waiters and taxi drivers may not be so iar off the track after all, writes Anne O’Hare M'Cormick, in the ‘ New York.Times.’ Head waiters, to be sure, are a bit too upper, class to reflect public opinion on the lower levels. But they are more inter-national-minded nowadays than Foreign Ministers. . Reporters who spend their days sounding out Governments and people who influence official policy need the soothing presence of the maitre d’hotel at dinner time to reassure them that there are other countries besides the one they’re in. The head waiter is about the only man-of-the-world left in any capital ; at least, ho is the most conspicuous survivor of that Old World where men, money, and ideas circulated at will instead of being locked up in a series of fortified compounds.

The taxi driver is different. A study of chauffeur’s and the vintage, variety, and habits of the vehicles they pilot through strange streets might give a truer picture of the world than the view obtained in “ official circles ” and “ responsible quarters.” THE TYPICAL MEN. For taxi-drivers are typical. In Rumania a great many are said to belong secretly to the Iron Guard; perhaps that explains their peculiarly conspiratorial air. In Palestine the most numerous and the safest are armed Jews, reckless young fellows who shatter the legends of Jewish caution as completely as the agricultural colonies disprove the notion that the Jew is not a farmer. In Poland taxicabs are fewer than droshkies, and the drivers handle their machines as if they were horses on ' the rutted roads of the steppes. The Paris drivers are grizzled old fellows, testy and taciturn, likely to bo anything but French, yet taking on the characteristics of that inicldle-aged, sceptical, and, at sharp corners, unexpectedly audacious people. In London, sitting aloft in the biggest and solidost of all taxicabs, they have the manner and bearing of upper servants, polite, dependable, quiet, a little too servile.

In Berlin they take no chances. Out on the open roads the drivers let themselves go, as Germans do when they have no rules to restrain, them. Even Hitler complains of the abnormal number, of motor accidents. But in the cities traffic officers don’t get any back talk; -nowhere are their orders more instantly obeyed. READING OR ARGUING. In cabs, either rickety or brand-new, the Roman chauffeurs talk. They are alwavs’ interrupted reading the papers or gathered in little groups, arguing while they wait, and as they dash down steep streets whistling warnings to the pedestrians, they continue the conversation with the passenger, quite ready to grumble over the scarcity of coffee, tlie price ot bread, the price of war, weight of the Axis,, any party leaders but Mussolini, still the pride and boast of most of bis countrymen. In bis attitude towards his “ fare ’ the Roman suggests the New York taxi driver But it is a dim suggestion, as the .fare discovers at the firstimpact of the real article. The public chauffeur of Manhattan is in a class by himself. Despite opposing system of. government, the Italians and the French are naturally democratic. While increasing political and economic democracy

has done little to modify class consciousness in England, the Nazi dictatorship is rapidly destroying the class system in Germany, especially in the army. But all such confusing distinctions fade into the background in the presence of the- full-blown democracy of the. New York taxi driver. Undoubtedly he is “ fresh,” as free-and-easy, and unconscious of any line of race, colour, or condition, social or economic, as is America compared to the freest society in Europe.

A TRAVELLER’S RETURN. Almost the first American voice heard by this returning traveller was the voice of a coloured taxi driver. He started out, by inquiring about the trill. Was there going to be war? Then he launched into a discussion of, the coal strike. “ Now that this publicity trouble over in Europe is sort of settling down,” he remarked—a purely unintentional, jab at the passenger—- “ we’ll get around to a little pacifyin’ round here.” A little later a familiar taxi man who parks near ‘ The Times ' Office opened his door with a welcoming grin. “ Say, how long you been gone?” he asked. “ Five months? Then you weren’t here when it happened.” “ What happened?” “ Why, T had a baby!” he announced proudly, anv we

swerved within an inch of a truck a* he reached into his pocket and handed over a snapshot of a bright-eyed infant enthroned on a satin quilt in a big bed. Certainly the taxi driver is :the best sample, of our particular brand of democracy. Meeting him first crack makes you, recall all the others you have encountered, floating oh the tide* of crisis/ The European landing on these shores who gets his'first ghmpsw into America by quizzing taxi men gets nearer . the heart of our mystery—for the United States is almost as inexplicable to Europe' as Germany or Russia is to us—than by any other short cuts. To one coming up for air after long immersion in the international situation, they go a long way towards explaining the whys of Europe and the ways of America.