NEWS AND VIEWS

New Zealand Times, Volume L, Issue 11415, 11 January 1923, Page 3

NEWS AND VIEWS

BY ENGLISH COMEDIANS.

PROHIBITION IN AMERICA. (the names of Lee White and Clay Smith are not strange to the ‘‘Diggers’’ who spent their leave and their money "doing the theatres” in London. But even the "Diggers” may he surprised to learn that the two genial comedians are American-horn, even though eight years in England has disguised them very completely. And now, after a visit to their home country, they admit they are wondering whether they are Americans any longer. A "Times’’ reporter who saw them yesterday asked them what prompted them to visit the Dominion.

‘‘l am glad to be in New Zealand,” said Miss Lee White. “I have always longed desperately to see this place. This is the place, so far as I remember, on which the sun never sets. It is a famous place. It will soon be more famous. I’m here.”

Mr Clay Smith intervened. "Cutting away from the frivolous for a moment, I may as well tell you that we have been wanting to come to New Zealand ever since we first hit Australia on our visit some years ago and heard about it.” "They told us,” Miss White went on; “they tolcf us then that were it not for New Zealand, Australia would he a depressed island left in the Pacific all by itself. They told us that whenever Australia wants anything it turns naturally to New Zealand- They told me that from* New Zealand they imported all their journalistSj holiday money, flat-heeled shoes, industrial psychology, and prohibition literature. They said to me, ‘New Zealand is great, and will prevail if we don’t look out.’ They said, ‘ln a few years now, rif any man in Australia has a drink, New Zealand will pass a solemn resolution about it.’ They told me a Jot of impressive things like that.” “Things have happened since, then, of course ’’ said Mr Clay Smith. "New Zealand has decided that it is not going to depend solely on the soda-foun-tain and the water-butt—not yet. In America we found that there was a growing tide of public opinion setting against rigid or uncompromising prohibition.”

"It was all rather sad.” The lady spoke again. "I had been in London for a season that lasted eight years without a break, and then I had visited Australia and blown about the world a bit. I went back to my own country of America after an absence of all those years, and I found my own country greatly changed. There was no longer any steady demand for wit and subtlety of the entirely decent sort on the stage. People were not so gay and hearty as they had been. In the small towns devotees of the two main, parties were watching each other all the time, and hating each other all they could. Clay and "I don’t drink enough to make an annual memorandum about. We drink so little that there are times when it seems that our neglect of our opportunity cries aloud for explanation. If we were told that we could not have another alcoholic drink of any sort for the next five years, we shouldn’t heave one sigh. All the had blood over prohibition is due to the fact that people make too much of liquor—make it the only subject on earth, go mad about it. I think that is what is making America so sad.

"The real reason why I was so very keen on making this Now Zealand tour was that wherever I have met New Zealanders in my work about the world, we’ve clicked. I knew a lot of the boys in London in those days of strain, when all our hearts were in the war, and we were great pals, the boys and I. I’m attracted, too, by the stories one hears everywhere of New Zealand as a wonderland—l don’t believe that story about the wild ducks on the hot lakes becoming so accustomed to the temperature that they habitually lay hard-boiled eggs. But I do think that Rotorua and Taupo must bo unusual places, and I want to see ’em. The thing that helped to sadden me rather when I was in America lately was the discovery that the years of British kindness and association with British eoldiers had left me more English than American.

It was a man in New Haven, Connecticut, who told mo that if I wanted to see Scotland I must go to Dunedin, New Zealand. And a man in Paris told me that I couldn’t be said really to know England till I’d been to New Zealand and seen Christchurch. The thing I heard about Auckland was rather an exaggeration, I think. A newspaper friend in Sydney told mo that the Aucklanders lean against things so habitually and so hard that the verandah-posts in. Queen street have to bo renewed every two months. I looked about when I was up there, and all the posts seemed at least a year old.’’