ENGLAND PRAISED.

Waikato Times, Volume 96, Issue 15357, 4 October 1923, Page 9

ENGLAND PRAISED.

AMERICAN'S AWAKENING. There is in London just now an Amerie-an millionaire who has lost more illusions since he arrived in Europe a month ago than any man has a right to lose in an ordinary lifetime (says the London Daily Mail). He came to Europe with certain fixed ideas. He believed that Germany was the most splendidly competent country in the world; he was convinced that France was the one authentic home of gaiety and laughter, that Italy was inhabited by loveliness, that Engbuid was only a few degrees more detestable than the English,'and that Ireland was a sorrowing, downtrodden country suffering from the centuries of her oppression by England. Those were his theories. He landed at Cherbourg, and went to look at Paris. Three days of it was enough, i He could not find any of that French gaiety that he had heard so much about; he could find only portentous gloom, and people who wanted to talk high pdlutics. He decided that the best thing to do was to go and look at that perfectly admirable Germany. He went. He went all over Germany. He looked at all sorts of German towns, talked to German magnates, considered German finance—and decided that all he had ever heard of Germany was totally untrue, and that the country was one of the most overrated in the world. So he moved to Italy. There, It must be admitted, he was unfortunate. Naturally he had to encounter the Italian State railways, which, :f they ha.ve the most beautiful electric trams in the world, have—some of them — also the most rudimentary sanitary arrangements which have been known since the days of the Ark. In sheer despair he retreated to England. English Kindness. He hoped for nothing from England. It was just a place where he thought that he and his family might wait for a few days before they could get a boat back to the United States. Thot was a fortnight ago. And he is still here. "I never thought I could be so wrong," he told a friend at the end of his first week. "I thought that everyone dn England hated Americans, that there was no *omfort or kindness'to be had, and that we should be sneered at wherever we went. "And what happened? When we landed we had not reserved our places in the train, and the guard asked a couple of your stiff aristocrats to move to one side of the carriage in order to make room for us, and they went, all smiles and politeness, as if it was an honour to- them. And since we got to London it has been kindness everywhere. "Ireland? I'm not going to Ireland. I'm afraid if I did I should lose another illusion, and I want to take one home with me.

"But when I think that all through the war I was a pro-German it makes me so sick that I want to go round apologising to every Englishman I fuel in the street."