BAGDAD ON THE HUDSON.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LI, Issue 16893, 25 November 1925, Page 7

BAGDAD ON THE HUDSON.

NEW YORK .MS MAGIC CITY OF NEW WORLD. MECCA CF WEALTH ANJ) . PLEASURE. New York is built 011 an island about thirteen miles long and not more than two and: a-half miles wide at its widest part. It. has a day population of B.CCO.COO and' a night population of between 6,000,C00 and 7,000,000. The city is policed by the Irish, run by the Italians, and financed by the Jews, of whom 1.600,000 live in New York. This information is not hard to obtain. Indeed, it is difficult to escape /(writes a correspondent). I have had it whispered to me through a megaphone by a. guide on a sight-seeing clniraban:, shouted at- me in a club, and told to mo in musical, sibilant. English by- a colored gentleman who brought me a pitcher of ice water. New Yorkers arc proud of their city, although they are too intent on the cost of this or that, “million-dollar” building, bridge, or sub-way to see the wonderful color and romance of the town. New York is an eastern city- in a western setting. It- has no beauty, no history, nothing to compare with London or Paris or Budapest, but, it is a patchwork of crazy quilt of vivid patterns, startling to the eye, and astounding to the ear. It is ’a memorial in stone and steel to a race struggling to express an individuality which thev have not yet achieved. COLOR AND NOISE. The noise, and color of New York instanly produce the effect of a stroll through Bagdad. It is ar if some genii of the Arabian Nights had seized handfuls of cities, placed ihem on a magic carpet, and! flown it across the world, and settled it on the banks of the Hudson. Here is Athens, there Berlin, -but •squares of the crazy quilt, each a water-tight compartment, full, each of them, with its own nationals, living and loving, just as if they were thousands of miles away, in the lands of their forefathers. I have travelled in a few hours through Germany, Italy, Hungary and China, each and every one a pulsing, vibrant part-of New York. Walk through tho Hungarian quarter, with its gipsy music and its restaurants, and you can close vour eyes and see those limitless plains where Horthy’s Hussars wheel and drill and await the coming of another day. Little Italy is just Naples. Plight in front of von might be the Via National*, screaming roaring, and trading. In a moment !we shall see a holy procession leaving the church, and I feel sure out of those narrow streets will pour Mussolini s Black Shirts pressing hack the surging crowds amid mingled jeers and cheers. SPECULATION. Chinatown. . . Full m thrills. ... A Tong war. . . Elusive China. One feels there will be a mother-of-pearl sunset, and junks will come stealing up the river. . . A barber’s shop where a Chink is shaving an Italian. . . . But what goes on beyond those closed doors? Games of fan-tan? Opium? Broadway at night. . . The sky is alight andi alive. . . Sixtv-nine theatres in one block of buildings. I close my eyes and try to visualise England, hut all I can think of is a cow in a green meadow. 1 open my eyes and t am in Whitechapel on a Saturday night. Jewesses with swaying hips and Junolike walk bring the glamour of the East in their wake. If New York in tho day lacks symmetry, at night a clonk of beauty bides its defects. Dusk comes swiftly, and tlu* giant skyscrapers twinkle in serried rows of yellow eyes; millions of lights respond to the wand of the Slave of the Lamp. Salmon pink shaded to coral, rose and mauve and lured reds mingle with tlie palest of violet; scarlet lamps blaze from the cinemas, blinking flares light the “chop suey joints’’ (the Chinese restaurants). New York is a maze of color, and Broadway the candle which attracts th: moths.