HATRED BOGIES

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 12, 5 April 1927, Page 3

HATRED BOGIES

IGNORANCE OF NA TIONS Popular Writer's Views NOVELIST VIEWS EUROPE Ignorance is at the root of international hatred. This is the opinion of Robert Keable, author of “Simon Called Peter” and other popular novels. Early this year he returned from a visit to Europe. He passed several months in his old heme in England and travelled *L rOU °k Germany, France, Austria and the Balkans, arranging for the translation of several of his more popular books. He is now back in his South Sea retreat at Papeete, and recently contributed the following thought-provoking article to the “San Francisco Chronicle.”

Ignorance is the main cause of war. As long as one African tribe in one valley thought the kindred tribe in the next valley a perverted race of degenerates, there was neither trust nor trade but a continual state of war. There was never a chance of reconciliation, for as soon as any head appeared over the mountain crest it was converted into a pin-cushion. There was no chance of reconciliation—until. a stronger power forbade fighting, forced intercourse and caused the people of the one valley to discover that the people of the other valley were bloodbrothers under the skin. HUMAN STUPIDITY Ignorance is still the main cause of war, for the increase in means of communication has not led to anything like a proportional increase in knowledge. This is not only due to the “rigging” of newspapers; it is due also to the stupidity of human nature. Thus there are three things known to every Englishman of America; that it is the home of prohibition, easy divorce and billions of dollars. The greater part of American news in English newspapers is exclusively concerned with these things, with the movies, chewing gum and crime as the third trinity. The result is that the English-man-in-the-street thinks that the American-in-the-street has long ago lost all ideals of freedom, knows nothing of home life and is very wealthy. In addition his amusements are fantastic. Did anybody ever see an American on the English stage who was not co-respondent or a cowboy, or an Englishman on the American stage who did not wear a monocle and talk like a fool? And as a conclusion the average English picture of the average Californian citizen is about as untrue as it could possibly be. “HOME” IN AMERICA. “HOUSE” IN BRITAIN When I first came to America, before I crossed the water, I could find out nothing of the true life of America. Just as I could find out nothing of the real American country-side, I had been told and had read of the prairies, of the Rocky Mountains and the Great Lakes, but no one could tell me what one would see from the railway carriage once outside New York. I was told of the peculiarities of great American hotels, but never of the interior of American homes. And yet one of the really important things about America is that the American habitually speaks of a “home” where the Englishman speaks of a “house.” Despite all this there never will be war between England and America unless it be a civil war. There are sufficient citizens on both sides who know the truth and who would no more think of sticking bayonets into each other than they would think of bayoneting their brothers. Not than it is a question of being brothers or cousins or anything of that sort; it is simply that the average Englishman and the average American, as we know them, are citizens of the same republic. They have the same ideals and the same interests. If America and England ever find themselves at war it will not be because of ignorance or wisdom, but because they have gone plumb crazy. THE SAME REPUBLIC But leaving England and America out of it, ignorance may any day bring about a war between England or America and the Continent of Europe. It has fallen to my lot to travel fairly extensively; I have, for example, just completed a journey across Canada, through France, Italy, Switzerland, Czecho-Slovakia, Poland, Germany, Holland and Belgium successively, into England, up to Scotland, and back via New York to San Francisco. In a few places—Czecho-Slovakia, for instance —I have been able to talk with the great ones of the earth, but in the majority of cases my coiiversation has been with ordinary citizens, with authors, publishers, printers, booksellers, reporters, hotel-keepers, bell-hops, men-in-the-street and clubs, and their wives. I must not also forget students, everywhere. I have been able to hear what the ordinary man thinks and to see what the ordinary man sees. And I have made a great discovery. Nine men out of ten, wherever they live and whatever tongue they speak, in the United States or on the Continent, are, as English and Americans, citizens of the same republic. FALSE IMPRESSIONS But you would never think that if you did not go and see. For the moment I am concerned with America, and I say that to read the American newspapers one after the other all the way over from New York to San Francisco, is to get a totally false impression of the tribe over the hill-top in the next valley. The average tribal brave over there, is, according to the newspapers, a fire-eater, an American hater and a bankrupt money-grabber. He is at once a wily schemer and a crass idiot. Having just had one war, he is already pining for another, into which he is all out to draw America if the fair bait of world courts and nation leagues, in which he does not hfmself in the least believe, can possibly do the trick. In the interva* he won’t pay his debts. .. Now I am not making any prediction about the course of events in the next

quarter century. He is a brave man who does. Into what mess such talk on this side and minorities with a grievance on the other may not lead us, heaven al6ne knows. Heaven has watched many a tragic story unroll itself in the past and it may so watch again. But I will say this: there never was a greater or more universal will for peace in Europe than there is to-day. There never was a time when the common people were nearer understanding each other instinctively than they are to-day. There never was a greater chance for the triumph of good will among men than there is to-day. And in so far as it is being frittered away, largely through ignorance, there never was a bigger opportunity for a greater tragedy in the story of our planet. TALK OF HATRED CREATES HATRED Let us confine ourselves to one aspect of the problem. It is fairly consistently said over here that Americans are hated on the other side. Given time, when it has been said long enough and. loud enough, both Continentals and Americans will believe it, will think it ought to be believed and w’ill act upon it. Yet it is the biggest lie going the round of the world to-day. Two reasons are alleged for it: First, that Americans behave so badly on the Continent, and secondly, that the Continentals are so ungrateful and so greedy. Both allegations are ridiculous. Let us take the first. The average American abroad does not go about burning foreign notes in public cafes, jeering at foreign institutions and flouting his riches. To begin with, the average American abroad is not rich, and thei?e is something almost pathetic and certainly most moving in the veneration with which he approaches foreign institutions of any historicity. Americans in England have shamed me for my little appreciation of England and have drawn me nearer to themselves by their very worship of England. ALL WANT TO LIVE AND LET LIVE At Milan I talked with a priest who had just shown an American group around the cathedral. He said with real emotion: “It is wonderful that so great a people should be so gracious to a poor priest. And the reverence they have for the cathedral. America must have a great soul.” No, believe me, if the normal American tourist were all that foreigners knew of America there would be no land more sung in Europe to-day than the land of the Stars and Stripes. The reverse of the picture is equally true. In all my European wanderings I did not meet a single person who wanted war. The normal Belgian and the normal German alike, the Czech and the Pole and the Austrian, each and all want to bury ...the hatchet and live and let live. I expected to find (from what I had read) that the average Italian was burning to conquer the world and that the average Frenchman wants to annex the Rhine. But the average complaint, at once loud and long, is that the silly passport restrictions still continue and that for many moneys there cannot be substituted a common coinage. SOME AVERAGE CITIZENS I should like to embark upon the subject of the war debts and the League of Nations, but I have no space. There is, of course, perplexity about such policies and powers. But the amusing thing is that perplexity is common to us all and not the exclusive possession of one side or the other. We are all forever wondering where our particular government obtained the mandate for this or that, however it came by its policy, what in the world it really does propose to do. Mesopotamia is not the only blessed word; try Nicuragua, Vilna, Bessarabia and the rest. Each represents a problem to some average citizen. And when you are told that Italy is liable to go to war any day with France for the possession of don’t for goodness sake imagine that the average Italian has the faintest desire to quarrel with th& average Frenchman about anything more exciting than, say, the price of onions. FEAR-RIDDEN BY BOGIES For the truth about things as they are in the world to-day is that every nation—every nation—is governed by a minority largely composed of the world’s lunatics and medievalists. These poor folk are fear-ridden by bogies and obsessed by exploded superstitions. They naturally tend everywhere to be exploited by dishonest skunks, whose sole ambition is to fill their own pockets and guard their own interests, individuals who are the pirates of modern civilisation. And the worship of the very god whom we ourselves have set up prevents us lynching them at Sight. We' pity our forefathers who believed in the divine right of kings or who' put up with the feudal system. We suppose that democracy gave the common people a voice. The truth is that in pulling down tyrants wg left their thrones vacant for worse usurpers to occupy, and that having made free speech possible the average man forgets to speak.