IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 20127, 21 April 1928, Page 6

IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA

yyiTH the object of advancing accurate knowledge and good understanding by enabling representative British journalists to visit America, the English-speaking Union of the United States established Newspaper Fellowships in memory of Walter Hines Page. Mr J. A. Spender was selected as the first Senior Fellow and on his return to England was entertained by the English-speaking Union in London.

He said he hail received certain dominant, impressions; he saw wealth, power and creative energy manifesting themselves over the whole country; he saw the spirit of equality and fraternity actively at. work, providing the career open to talent for all classes and brining the best brains to bear on industrial development; he saw a concerted effort to raise the standard of life by the perpetual creation of new wants under the stimulus of salesmanship and advertising. This was in sharp contrast with the old European idea of the simple life and making a little go a long way, and accompanied with the payment-by-instalment system and other devices for providing consumers with capital, it. constituted one of the most, daring economic experiments yet

Taking it in all it was a great adventure and a remarkable achievement, which all critics of the United States should begin by acknowledging.

Speaking of international relations, Mr Spender said thinking Americans were already beginning to ask themselves how long a policy of non-intervention and disinterestedness could be maintained by a nation which was the universal creditor and had probably greater interests in Europe than any European nation,

and it was beginning to be understood that it might fall to Washington to decide matters of the utmost importance to Europe. But in all these matters the teaching would come from facts, and not from the scoldings or remonstrances of other Powers. He had strong hopes that when the issues were understood. Americans would act generously. The problem for British and Americans was to make their special relationship a good relationship, to be candid and open with each other, and to refrain from the envy and uncharitableness which too often in history had embittered the dealings of kindred peoples.