“PUSSYFOOT" AS STORY TELLER.

Southland Times, Issue 19659, 9 October 1922, Page 6

“PUSSYFOOT" AS STORY TELLER.

A CONTRAST IN IDEALS. THE ART OF EXAGGERATION. (Published by arrangement). z\n American parson, after preaching for over an hour on the immortality of the ooul, declaimed: “I looked at the mountains and could not help thinking ‘Beautiful as you, are, you will be destroyed, while my soul will not.’ I gazed upon the ocean, and cried: ‘Mighty as you are, you will eventually dry up, but not I.’ ” “Pussyfoot” Johnson is here, he says, to tell us about prohibition in /kinerica. In a court of law an intelligent British jury would regard him. as a biassed witness. But even if he was nor, a professional prohibitionist, and had a good case, there is no reason why this country should go to America for lessons in social reform. The first and supreme test of a country is its system of administering justice. In contrast with the British system, the American system is primitive. Lynch law and the manipulation of the courts in the interests of the guilty find no place in British communities. Mr Johnson, throught his sympathetic biographer (Mr F. A. M'Kenzie), tells us that, the American politicians are largely corrupt. TKe American politicians voted by a majority to make America dry, but a large body of American opinion is against the politicians, and one portion of the population Is kept busy spying on the other. If Mr Johnson was anxious to persuade Americans to observe the law' the politicians made for them, there is scope enought for his abilities in America. He could take up the job of making the obnoxious prohibition law popular. He could .attempt to make it a success, and when America becomes a blissful paradise, he could have gently broken the news to the rest of the world. Instead of which, he tells us many funny stories. “Pussyfoot” Johnson might have helped the cause of prohibition in bis own country. He is not unpractised in the art of spying—luuch of his reputation springs from his amateur detective work in antiliquor raids. The rest of it. results from judicious advertising. His biographer tells how during a State campaign for prohibition “Pussyfoot” issued printed letter heads purporting to come from a brewer who manufactured “Johnson’s Pale Ale.” On this letter-paj>er he invited replies • frorii liquor dealers how best to aid him “as a member of the trade” to counteract the “dry” propaganda. His biographer says the result was a rich harvest of evidence. PerMhis that was smart according to American standards, but it was a dishonest trick. The average Britisher would describe it in other language, but the methods of “Pussyfoot” Johniwn are American methode, and Americans arc not great cricketers. But America it not Britain. Britain is linked together with her Allies in the late war in the League of Nations for a great, international effort to prevent future wars. America stands aloof, and allows others to assume moral and financial obligations which are hers as much as theirs. Britainhas offered, as a prelude to the re-estab-lishment of international solvency, to cancel her war debts—a larger sum than is owing to America—but America worships at the shrine of the dollar and will not forgive her debtors. What has America, from which “Pussyfoot" Johnson asks us to copy prohibition, with all its evasions and infringements of personal liberty, given as a gift in common to the world? What in art, government. or literature? Professor Stephen Leacock says: **lt is a fact which, had better be 'candidly confessed than indignantly de-

nied, that up to the present time the contribution of America Io the world’s great literature has been disappointingly small.'' Yes, but what of the stories “Pussyfoot” tells? Americans are great storytellers—we have had them here before. Sometimes we learned more about them after their departure than while they painted rosy vrord pictures of the land of the wooden nutmeg and more recently of wood alcohol, Americans excel in extravagant stories—“a form of American fun,” says Professor Leacock, “which has always proved difficult of comprehension to our British cousins.” This exaggeration is jieculiar to the Yankee —“American exaggeration in literature passes the bounds of cemnpn sense,” adds Professor Leacock, “and becomes mere meaningless criminality.'’ From exaggeration in literature to exaggeration in all other things is the easy and logical step. “Pussyfoot’s” stories prove it to be so. Here are two American stories which he didn’t tell. The first was penned in 1850, showing that Yankee habit of exaggeration is ingrained:— This is a glorious country. It* has longer rivers and more of them, and they arc muddier and deeper and run faster, and rise higher and make more noise, and fall lower and do more damage than anybody else’s rivers. It has more lakes, and they are bigger and deeper and clearer and wetter than those of any other country. Our railway cars are bigger and run faster and pitch off the track oftener and kill more people than all other railway cars in any other country. Our steamboats carry bigger loads, are longer and broader, burst their boilers oftener and send up their passengers higher, and their captains swear harder than the captains of any other country. Our men are bigger and lunger and thicker; can fight harder and faster, drink more mean whisky, chew more bad tobacco than in every other country. The second is from Daniel Webster’s speech to the*citizens of Rochester:— Men of Rochester, I am glad to see you. I am glad to sec your noble city. Gentlemen, 1 saw your falls, which I am told are one hundred and fifty feet high. This is a very interesting fact. Gentlemen, Rome had her Caesar, her Scipio, her Brutus, but Rome in her proudest days had never a waterfall, a hundred and fifty feet high. Gentlemen Greece had her Pericles, her Demosthenes, and her Socrates, but Greece in her palmiest days never had a waterfall a hundred and fifty feet high. Mon of Rochester go on. Exaggeration in all things. If prohibition in America was Ihe heaven-sent gift of the gods which “Pussyfoot” Johnson would have us believe, there would lx* fewer unemployed, less crime, no great strikes, and no massacres like that at Herrin, where 214 persons are held for trial, 44 being for murder. Stories are amusing, but facts arc more inq>ort.ant. And Amen ca is not Britain, nor are America's ways our ways.