TOO BIG TO FALL

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXII, Issue 220, 31 August 1932, Page 8

TOO BIG TO FALL

GIGANTIC AMERICA SLOW PATH OP EVENTS. CITIES WORLDS APART. It ii difficult —indeed it would be almost exact to say that it is impos■ible—to understand what is going ot» in another country, because events, .however dramatic, mean nothing in themselves, and facts, howevqj stark, however sharp in outline, (gave to be interpreted to be true, writes Mary Borden in the London “Daily Telegraph.” ( it is necessary to link them up with fa hundred other facts, much less easily . observed and usually ignored by ’strangers, before they can be properly assessed as elements of stability or. disruption in a nation's life. And we .argue from the few given facts according to our own experience, our underAUnding of the complex pattern of our .own national life, our knowledge of -the character of our own race and of -ourselves. < We say to ourselves, “I would do so-and-so, and my neighbour would do 'likewise in such and such circumstances”! and we say, looking across •the Atlantic, “If it is as bad as they saw it is over there, it can mean only one thing: a serious political convulsion is imminent, for if such things r were happening in England there would be a revolution.*’ And that is just where the most intelligent, even the most fair-minded and sympathetic people in England are r thinking about America. But they are wrong; and they have got it all wrong because, even if they -have got the facts right and have collected a good many, for every fact they know they ignore a dozen that are relevant. Curiously enough, they seem to ignore the most obvious facts of all. and seem to forget to take into account in their reasoning such simple things as the size of the country.

, DAY OF TENSION. I was in New York a year and a half ago, on the day that the Bank of the United States failed. It was one of the strongest days that 1 have ever lived through. The atmosphere of New York .was Hike the atmospnere of London on 4th August, 1914. We happened to be lunching and dining with “big men” on Wall Street. 1 had with me two men. one an American from the Middle West and one an Englishman. My two companions spent the morning down town interviewing bankers ' and brokers, who were as polite as any gentlemen in a panic could be. We saw the American off for Chicago on ‘’The Twentieth Century” at three o’clock, after a lunch party that was about us cheerful as the last meal on a sinking ship. The Westerner had to go because he had to arrange for a loan from his Chicago bank next morning if his business in the West were to survive.

1 knew this, and when at last my nerve-wracking New York day was done (1 had been to a tea-party, a cocktail party, and a dinner-party by that time, all as cheerful as the lunchparty) 1 fell into bed exhausted, saying to myself. “Well, it’s all up with my Chicago friend. He’D never get that loan uow.” CITIES FAR APART. But “The Twentnth Century” got to Chicago at nine or mue-thirty in the morning, and at eleven 1 was handed a telegram which read, “Loan arranged. All my financial troubles over tor the moment.” I read it aloud •to my British husband, who looked as if he ccuid not understand. Indeed, neither of us could understand, for 1 too, had forgotten the size of my country. We understood so little that we rang up Chicago on the telephone, ft took a minute and a halt to get on to the man we wanted, but 1 knew he was 800 miles away when he said, “Certainly, I got my loan. Lt takes three weeks lor anything that happens in New York to affect Chicago.’ l Wb have be, n supplied in England since 1929 with three sets of American tacts that have kept three pictures before us. We get news from Washington, and arc given a picture of Congress that reminds us or nothing so much as a drawing by Batemau; we get the stockmarket quotations, and see the skyscrapers of Wall Street lurch as if we viewed them from a switchback; and we are told all about the kidnappers, gangsters, racketeers, and bbotleggejs, till the underworld of that country across the sea takes on the turid glow of a prairie fire; and quite recently we have been told the dreadful story of the unemployed. None of these pictures is pretty. The first is so bewildering in its composition that it suggests a picture conceived in the mind of a lunatic.

“MUST BE CRAZY.” “Congress,” we say to ourselves, looking down Whitehall to Parliament sqnare, “Congress must be crazy; and a crazy Congress means only one thing, siwft and inevitable retribution. lr’ the British House of Commons were full of menus insane as the majority of the members of the American House of Representatives, the British people would kick them out, just as they did kick out the far less demented Socialists a year ago. Therefore the American Congres; will get the boot.” But someone who knows a little about America argues: “You can’t get rid of this Congress or any Congress till its time is up. That it is futile and infantile and hostile to the Cabinet makes no difference; that there is an impasse and a deadlock at a moment when quick action is called for makes no difference; that no Government could possibly govern during a crisis ' under such conditions makes no difference. The American Constitution won’t allow you to give Congress the boot. “It is the most rigid and therefore the worst Constitution in the world at the moment of world crisis. It simply doesn’t work. “Very well, then, the American people must change it. They’ve got to change it, so they will change it. What else is a Constitution for, anyhow 1 LITTLE DONE. “But they e.-n’t >» tin • ’ wool.l take five yc»v of. orderly . re to repeal even the Eighleeiim Amend

ment. If they are to change the Constitution in time to save the country, they’ll have a coup d’etat, a revolution of some sort.” And to this you answer: “Exactly. That’s exactly wlist we expect to see happen quite shortly in America.” But you have forgotten to take into consideration a number of facts. You have forgotten, in the first place, that the American is a great talker, and that 90 per cent, of all that goes on in Congress is nothing but talk. And you h-.ve forgotten, perhaps, that the Senate has power to throw out any Bill passed by Congress, and the President the power to veto any Bill passed by either House, or both; so perhaps you don’t realise that Congress when it passed, for instance, the Veterans’ Bonus Bill the other day, not only knew the Bill would never become Inw. but was counting absolutely on the Senate to ensure that it would not.