INTRODUCING JOHN BULL TO JONATHAN.

Otago Witness, Issue 3334, 6 February 1918, Page 54

INTRODUCING JOHN BULL TO JONATHAN.

THE VALUE OF THE PRESS INTERVIEW AS AN AID TO ANGLOAMERICAN UNDERSTANDING. Bv Edward Marshall, in the World’s Work. Since I have been on this side of the ocean —about 15 months on this visit—it has been my privilege to meet and talk with many Englishmen and Frenchmen of real importance because 1 have been a mouthpiece through which they could reach a vast American audience —the readers of many great American newspapers. I have been a sort of longdistance transatlantic telephone, through which the views of worth-while persons of the Allies have been transmitted to America. The American newspaper reader has come to regard the interview with an important person as a sort of super-news. With every one which I have written in England I have become better satisfied because it has been my privilege to send to my own people the evidence in the British case. It is a wonderful case, and I have had it from the mouths of wonderful men. The two* most wonderful, from the interviewer’s point of view, whom I have met in England have been Mr Balfour and Mr Asquith. We have not had any Arthur Balfours in the United States — except yours. He has been with us but for a moment. We have men. as admirable, perhaps, in American politics, but not» of the same type. We have men of much the same type, but they are. not in politics. Mr Balfour was among the first to give me a hand when I came over here to beg important Englishmen to do what they could to help me counteract in America the German propaganda, which was very able, very industrious, very unscrupulous, and, for a time, very successful, largely because it was uncontradicted. When I asked Mr Balfour to explain to the United States the British conception. of the meaning of the term “ Freedom of the Seas” he refused, seeming to be somewhat startled by the thought of being interviewed. He said that when I took my pencil out he felt like an unarmed ship approached by a Hun submarine. But I finally torpedoed him—that is, he presented his argument with a clarity and marvellous simplicity of conviction which did not fail to carry conviction to those who read what he had to say. But I, as, an interviewer, had little to do with the interview. I wrote something after our first talk, and submitted it to him for revision. The revision turned out to be the greater part of the interview as it finally appeared in print. Some clever person has said that good plays are not written—they-are re-written. This sometimes applies to good interviews. . My interview with Mr Asquith was not a re-written interview, however; he wrote all of it, after I had laid my questions before him. That was a compliment to the people of America and no discourtesy to me. It showed what great importance Mr Asquith attaches to the statement of the British case in the United States, even though we now are in the war. The virile statesman spoke (nay, wrote) as we say from the shoulder. National Traits in the Interviewed. — The interviewer ■who has an object higher than the mere earning of his living learns not to care what method the interviewed may choose for making his expressions. He has to. I once went to see the President of a Latin-American State at a time when a statement from him would have been of great interest to American newspaper readers. The matter had been arranged by post and telegraph during a period of weeks. MHien at last I reached him he would give me no opportunity to ask questions, asking them himself instead. For a time I endured that against my will, hoping that presently he would cease to interview me and let me interview him. When I felt sure that this time had come he cordially bade me good-bye, volleying Spanish good wishes at me with a rapidity I could not .combat. I had travelled many hundreds of miles to see him, and had given him as good an idea as I could of the feeling in the United States—and he had given me a cordial reception and an almost affectionate farewell. An Englishman’s sense of honesty would prevent him from doing that. I believe that that is what most must impress an outside journalist who comes here—the Englishman’s sense of honesty. I have been told that this is the case by other American writers, by Frenchmen, by Russians, by Italians. The British public" man rarely seems to wish to use the newspaper for what we call “effect.” If he has anything to say he. says it. If he hasn’t he keeps still. That’s the end of it. It is splendid. Men like Lord Derby, Mr Bonar Law, the two distinguished Chamberlains, the late Earl Grey, are deeply satisfactory- to the interviewer’s soul. When they have anything to say they say it very simply, effectively: frankly and sincerely they answer such questions as may be put to them, even though they mav be questions which they do not especially wish to answer, and that’s the cud of it. The French President.— The President of France, M. Poincare, is one of the most interesting figures I have come into contact with since I have been in Europe this time. It seemed necessary that an important statement should go across to America from France at about the time when I asked for

the interview. Germany was spreading stories in the United States of an impending split between the two principal Allies, England and France. I submitted some suggestions. Presently I was sudden!y summoned to the Elysee, and President Poincare handed mo a few sheets of blue notepaper. He had answered every question. He, too, himself had written an interview with himself, and had done it very well; but I had not been present at the actual birth of the baby. However, he had answered every Question I had asked. Through the medium of interviews an immense service has been done both to England and the United States. Good Work Done by Interviews. — America has come to have a pretty accurate idea of Britain's exact position, aims, and ideals in this war. She would have had it sooner, and the sooner would have been fighting on your side if we had been able to get interviews faster. A good deal of British impatience with the course followed by our President would have been non-existent, too, if your newspapers had not been suffering from the white-paper shortage. You would have been better informed than you were of the difficulties besetting Mr Wilson? I suppose the people of the United States are better informed in international affairs from every possible point of view except the German —and more completely misinformed in international affairs from the Germant point of view—than any people in the world. We have come to know the British pretty well —I mean that we, as a people, have. That is not true of the British as a people and America, They do not know us well. Every new thing our people have learned of you has" made us like you better (speaking generally) than we did before. Most of our unpleasant misconceptions—and they were many—have vanished. This has been brought about very largely through the medium of the interview. It has cleared up almost all the prejudice against England which has filtered down through the years since 1776, re-enforced now and then, as by the Venezuela episode, and, more recently, by the impolitic way in which the black list and the cotton embargo were promulgated. The Critical Briton.— We have come to know you, and with every new, real detail of the British character which we have learned we have liked you better. Some day you may come to know us-, and when you do you, too, will find your liking growing, I hope. At the present the Englishman in any London club likes us. well enough, but the Englishman in the street knows us little and likes us less. He feels that he has the right to be very critical of us. And I have just read an article in an American magazine by Lord Northcliffe. It does not point the finger of scorn at us. It boxes our ears. We don't mind that, by the way. America never minds criticism. In an interview given six or seven years ago Lord Northcliffe told me to record the fact that he classed us as the "White Chinese." He said that only Wun Lung and Chow Lee could be as' unoriginal as we. He said that we had a genius for being commonplace. I think he did not mean it very seriously.; but the American press as a whole hailed it with delight. They gloated over it. Thev revelled in it. No one. resented it. "He is making fun of us. How interesting !" said American readers. Then after reading what he had to say: "He does it very well. Three cheers for him!" That is the American attitude—abuse us if you like, but don't do" it stupidly. The Germans now are doing it stupidly. Edison —Roosevelt—Ford. — There are certain figures in America whom I especially wish might be introduced to you, as American journalists have introduced Englishmen to America, in comprehensive interviews. I wish Edison might talk to you once a month; I wish Roosevelt might talk to you once a week; I wish Henry Ford might talk to you every day during the period of your industrial reconstruction. 1 You know Edison and Roosevelt and like them. You don't know Henry Ford and many of you don't like him, for you think him a "peace-crank." As a matter of fact, he is one of the greatest of living men, and the lessons he might teach of the organisation of industry, of the combination of the manufacture of commercial products with the manufacture of men, would be of greater value than any others I can think of in the days of rebuilding and reorganisation which must follow the war in Great Britain and European industry generally. The Henry Ford Methods.— The success of his methods of high pay, high pressure, and " help the other fellow''' has been so great that hundreds of employers in the United States are following "his example as best they can. He has' learned the mighty lesson that the human animal invariably and absolutely reacts to good treatment —I don't mean to patronage or philanthropy. It seems to "have been a new discovery in industry. When he raised wages to a minimum of sdol (or a pound) a day for first-class workmen he did so with the idea of dividing with those who had helped him some of the profits which had begun to pile up faster than he knew what- to do with. It was in. an interview which I had the luck to work out with him that he told the full story for ths first time —and Henry Ford is a hard man to interview, he has not the smallest corception of his own importance, a characteristic which the interviewer does not often run across.

He thought h© had more surplus money than was safe —far 'mors than he could use. Hard times, were affecting most of the Detroit manufacturers, and men were clamouring for work at the gates of tho main Ford factory, where more than 14,000 men are employed. No more could, bo hired than had already been put to work, and his partner, who was with him watch-

ing the crowd from an upper story window. said: " The trouble is that even when one of them gets a job with us we don't pay him enough to let him really live." "I don't mind paying them sdol a day," said J?ord; and then and there, it was agreed to, without the slightest 'thought that anything would be accomplished besides the division of surplus profit with the men who had helped to create it. They had been getting a maximum of 3dol and 40 cents a day (about 13s 6d.). Both men were infinitely surprised a few months later when a careful study of the situation showed them that the men were earning a larger percentage on the wages paid to them than ever they had earned before. Being paid more wages, they had been so stimulated by the better lives opened to them that they had immensely increased their ability and desire to produce. The Ford surplus profits are still piling up. The more Henry Ford pays his men the more they earn for him. He is in a very difliiuit dilemma. Now lie has been for more than a year giving rebates on the original lorices which old customers have paid him for the cars they have purchased. He lias had to put in a great machine, specially invented for him, in order to sign the tens of thoueands of cheques which he sends out for rebates. How the Case of the Allies was Stated.— I have saicl that you don'? like Henry Ford because you think him a peacecrank. That he ever so misunderstood the' European war as to make him think it possible to do that which he attempted to do was not his fault, but that of the fact that up to that time the case of the Allies had not been stated in the United States. It never was told on the initiative of the Allies. It has been told by American writers who have come over here and have fought, almost with their teeth and their claws, to get it out of you. This matter was most serious. It lost to the cause of England and France for a long time the .most valuable of potential Allies • —that is, the most effective manufacturer of machinery and munitions in the world, and a population of a hundred millions from which to draw our fighting men. I have been told over here that we in the United States are a queer people because we make the lynching of the negro a popular sport, and as a rule three or four divorced wives each, as well as she who (according to some British commentators) is ours merely while she waits for evidence on which to start her case in court for divorce against her husband. That shows that you know very little more about us than some of us knew about you when the war began. When I rose to an occasion in a great American newspaper office and said that England never would be guilty of such atrocities as the Germans then were committing in Belgium, I was reminded of the fact that British officers once had tied sepoys to the mouths? of cannon. It was believed by the speaker that this might happen again presently. He was very doubtful about you —as doubtful as yon frequently have been about us. He was honest, too. Englishmen talk of lynchings and wooden-nutmegs as un-under-standingly. We don't know one another. That is the big future job. We've got to get acquainted. The Flags of Law and Liberty.— We, the Americans, and you, the British, have been prone to consider principally one another's failings. Probably the two peoples about average up in decency, although you are more 'orderly than we are. But the average Englishman would be as anxious as the average American to pull on the rope at the average American lynching, for the average Englishman places upon womanhood the same high value which the average American places upon it. More than any other men these two feel the horror of the especial crime for which lynching has proved to be the only deterrent punishment, just as, more \ than any other men, they felt the horror of the invasion of Belgium. You gave of your blood in wrath over it instantly, and we gave of our substance in sorrow for it instantly. But we were a long way off. When Cuba was outraged, close at our doors, we didn't wait, any more than you waited with regard to Belgium. You have believed us to be money-mad, prone to violent crime, with the nose prominent not only on our' faces but in our accent] we have regarded you as subservient to class distinctions which we know to be absurd, arrogant to outsiders, and—■ yes—oppressors of subject nations. You have had no idea that the Stars and'Stripes stands for Law, and we have had no idea that the Union Jack stands for Liberty. As a matter of fact, they are the two flags, both of which stand for both Law and. Liberty, in a degree not represented by any other two the world has ever known. How Edison Works for Bjitain.— What we all must try to do is to educate the man in the street in both countries so that he will learn these things. The men in high places already know them. Consider Edison. He worked all night for three nights once in the_ early days of the X-ray to build with his own hands an X-ray machine to find a bullet in tho body of a friend. I know. I was the friend. Well, he has worked all night and all dav three times three times to find for you a way out of your submarine trouble. When he began to work on a device to detect the presence of and follow the course of a submarine so that it might be avoided or attacked by a surface ship coming near to it or which it approached, who was he working for? England, of course. I know, because he told me bo. He thinks your relationships between employers and employed all wrong, but he thinks your hearts and sportsmanship are the finest upon the earth. He has told me so, and I have printed it in more interviews than one.

Two devices to detect submarines now exist in the United States, the second that of another member of the Naval Consulting Board, ■ of which Edison is the chairman. It happens that of this great body of inventors Mr Edison and myself are the proud parents. We worked the idea out in an interview. - We feel sure that it will end the submarine peril. Who has Edison been thinking of as he has worked? 'England, of course. When Ford recently placed his vast enterprise at the disposal of the American Government for the manufacture of munitions and the war transport, who was he trying to help? Not America. We never have been in immediate danger of attack from Germany. Remember that. She could annoy us, not attack us. Ford, the " peace-crank," as your newspapers called him for months, Was thinking of help for England and for France, not of help for the United States. ' —The White Man's Boat.— One of the greatest inventors of explosives in the world is an American, Hudson Maxim, brother of the late Sir Hiram Maxim, who was also Ameirican-born. Hudson Maxim and I are close friends, and more than once I have written interviews with him for publication. In the first year of the war I quoted him as follows: — "We of America have got to fight Jpr England, because the Englishman is our blocd brother. We are, too, of the same soul, and we must be of the same mind if together we are to do the job which will make the world worth living in, which no one else can do, and which neither of us can do alone." One of the most interesting, fearless, and expressive Englishman I have met was the late Earl Grey. I was absolutely _ delighted, a long time before we came into the .war, when he burst forth at my request with a vigorous denunciation of America because, though she claimed a place in the white man's boat, she had no right to it unless she sat down on the thwart and did her share of pulling at the oars. He said that instead of doing this we were lurking in the cabin, lolling at our ease, while Britain sweated at the task. I sent the interview to the American newspapers, and they.all "featured" it—and that being translated from xlmerican journalese into British means that they "played it- up,"—and that, being translated into English, means that they printed ifc prominently. A few cursed Earl Grey editorially, but most of them applauded him. But now we are in the war, anxious to do our share. We are Allies, which is more than friends, thank God! The important thing for all of us to do on both, sides is to see to it that further misunderstandings do not arise. I don't believe they will after Tommy and Sammy once have fought in the same cause in the eame trench.