BRITISH SPIRIT

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23616, 28 March 1940, Page 12

BRITISH SPIRIT

INQUIRIES IN BERLIN AMERICAN'S IMPRESSIONS [rtiO.M out OWN COHHESPONIJKNT~| NEW YORK, Feb. 15 A well-known American writer and traveller, Mr. Oswald Garrison Villard, who lias just returned from a tour abroad, said that in Berlin- he was eagerly asked about the spirit of the British oeople. Nothing, he said, impressed them more than the story he told of the young man who sat next to him on a bus just before he left for Germany. "Well, it had to come," Mr. Villard quoted the young man as saying. "You see, I am a young man. I shall probably have to go and may not jcome back. But there's no use going on in this way. I don't want to live in a Europe like the one we have lived in for the past livp years. How can a young man, like myself, build a home and found a family if he's told every six months he must be ready to go to war." That was the spirit in which England went into the war, he told the Germans. Those were the words used to him by porters, waiters, taxi-drivers — indeed, all the workers be had time and opportunity to meet. The chambermaid told him cheerfully: "We'll have to go on until we get rid of that man." "To return to the fresh, clean air of England after breathing the foul atmosphere of Germany, so poisoned by its murderous Government's malignity, hate and vituperation, is to enter a new. wholesome, free world, to experience an exaltation of spirit," said Mr. Villard. "There 'men can smile even under the strain of a terrible war. Thev look you straight in the eye, with nothing to apologise for or conceal."