WHAT HE DID NOT KNOW

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 22949, 29 January 1938, Page 9 (Supplement)

WHAT HE DID NOT KNOW

Wc pass on this fragment from an American broadcaster, Mr. Alexander Woollcott, who has put in this amusing 1 form some of (he changes which have occurred in only 'Jo years. r FHE young among you would be -*• surprised at how much we didn't know 25 years ago. Look back, for example, to 1912 and a young reporter in whom 1 fool an almost morbid interest. His name is Alexander Woollcott; he is 25; and we might describe him in terms of things he doesn't know. Let's see: He's suffering from an inferiority complex, but he's never heard of one. He's never heard of daylight saving. Nor rayon. Nor Soviets. Nor jazz. Nor

insulin. Nor G-men. He's never read a gossip column. He's never heard of an inhibition. He's never heard a rsidio nor seen a talking picture nor listened to the whir of an electric icebox. He's never seen an animated cartoon nor a cement road nor a Neon light. No, nor a filling station. Nor a wrist-watch. Ho lives in a world quite different from the America of His very ideas are different. Take two. What does lie think a job is? He thinks a job something any man can get who is willing to work. And a war? Why. a war is a practice still carried on only by remote. .comic-opera countries in Central America and the Balkans. How much he has to learn I