AMERICANS AID BRITONS.

Waikato Times, Volume 109, Issue 18229, 17 January 1931, Page 11 (Supplement)

AMERICANS AID BRITONS.

(Henry Leach in Chambers’ Journal.)

THE Americans have retired to their own land again, those who wander eastwards in the summer and autumn, who look around —less patromsmgly and disdainfully than before, it has been said. Some who are concerned murmur that they, have been s P® ndl “S money than formerly, and have displayed anxiety i pon a question of recovering on their return certain funds they have lately lost. They have sometimes been inclined to wrap about themselves an Atmosphere of Melancholy, a« of an earnest and striving people being piteousiy pu sued by some unfeeling fate. Such ohaiage o -mav jet be exhilarating to a people who delight m t am, formations quick and grand, and who but lately, at t o beginning of what was proclaimed as the Hoover pro.-penty era—which has not been realised—presumed as the ‘best ever’ of happy and successlul peoples mi ce the world began. They were justified despite the haiasmng and gigantic failures of their law, because the stanmud of living was reckoned to be higher in the United States at that time than anywhere in any period before, not b cause of the immensely rich, who are after all a small but noisy power in such considerations, but owing to the veritable elimination, or nearly, of the utterly poor \\ hdc the wandering Americans have been absent from them land, a public argument has been proceeding loudly there generated by an increased disposition, stimulated by slumps, to look into questions of expenditure and economy upon the question whether any man is worth a salary of a million dollars a vear, equal to £200,000 of our English money, because either in plain salary, or salary with bonus there are supposed to be a dozen men who are getting it and their names, are stated. The salary of the president of the Bethlehem Steel Corporation is said to be much over the million. When estimating whether a man is worth it, me decisive point evidently, much as it is disregarded in our own country, is the results accruing, and one leading American financier, supporting the million salaries, declares that he would gladly pay a certain person whom he names a million dollars of salary a year, knowing he would receive more than a million profit, and he would pay Mr Henry Ford a million to run the Ford Motors Company, if it were wholly •his. The latter case is almost clinching. None who has had the chance to see how this enormously imaginative and daring man has been rooting his own manufacturing companies in the soil of the leading countries of Euiope, with national appearance and native shareholders, can doubt his superlative genius and its cash value. But, encouraged by the Americans themselves, we have always heard too much of their rich and too little of those who, not poor indeed in the sense of beggary, are at the far end of the scale, scratching for their living. A year ago, and even the existence of such poor would not have been believed. Yet now a Chord of Impecunloslty floats through the American din. The country is passing through a severe trade depression, which is most aoute at this moment. Agriculture, textiles, and mining are drooping, and the motor industry has fallen very flat. Even when Mr Hoover wg.s engaged in his election campaign two years ago a total of one million eight hundred thousand of unemployed was admitted and argued upon; authorities, in the absence of official statistics, reckon the present number at four millions, or a full thirtieth of the total population. Under the strain, the problem of how to provide for them becomes public and prominent for the first time, and some old-established principles are being examined and sometimes scrapped. America has risen to her stupendous greatness upon the machine, and now, overproducing, as in other countries, the machine is grinding upon her. During her enormous prosperity preceding the present slump, the majestic idea or principle, that high wages are the secret of industrial success, because of the consuming power thus established sowing the seed for greater expansion and success, was blithely engaged, and the poor wan world, looking on with awe, was adjured to learn this Generous and Human Lesson. But now this maxim has been examined afresh minutely, and found faulty. Large numbers of workers are therefore being invited to accept reductions in their wages. The modified idea is that high wages encourage more trade and greater prosperity when trade is rising, but not otherwise, which seems to be a convenient and accommodating idea, not overloaded with sacrificing virtue, nothing of the commercially heroic about it. The American Federation of Labour has been preparing a petition—whose failure was in advance considered sure—to the President urging a special session of Congress to sanction a grant of a hundred million dollars for a national programme of public works. Herein some unexpected likeness between Europe and America appears. But similar words and facts do not mean same things or indicate like circumstances on these two continents, the old and the new, east and west again, which may be farther apart, unjoinable, than we have supposed. The wandering Americans will have . Something to Cheer Them

when the star-spangled banner of liberty floats over their heads again. Here in old England, we pay eighteenpence a gallon for the petrol for our cars, but in western America lately, because of a petrol war, they have been paying only the equivalent of a penny, plus a three-halfpenny State tax. And it is pleasant to know that in place of the heavypowered motor-cars to which, in great display, they have been accustomed, seven-horse-powered baby cars made by one of our best British firms have become popular. Concerned observers have stated that the visiting Americans now west of Sandy Hook again, have been more subdued in their manner than before, less aggressively confident aim demonstrative, more disposed to close inwards upon themselves as behoves wise men and women who think they may have lost some money, and who, looking around, perceive much trouble gathering in a seething world, and would fortify themselves. Surely they have been spending less —though, be it said, away from their hotels, where they have been most generous to themselves, they have always displayed a peculiar disposition towards

DIFFERENCE IN INSTINCT AND TASTE.

Almost Antagonistic to Ours.

Severe and Niggardly Economy. They have stirred up an idea sometimes that they regarded some other people, their superiors possibly in taste and tact, as crawling about them in hunger for their dollars like beggars of alms in Spain, and this strange idea has cultivated a special kind of frown upon the usually open and kindly American countenance, a hateful frown. It is easy to buy old houses, pictures, books, and pay far more for them than hag ever been paid before, and the pleasant sense of achievement in such case is more justifiable than some in envy will admit; but tact and taste and dignity are not acquired by the signing of a cheque. Instead of coming nearer, America is in some important ways, without will and conscious effort of her own, diverging farther and farther off, and she will never acquire the manner and way of Europe, and probably be the better for not doing so. Despite her new world and our old, we have been classing her civilisation with ours; but it is really a new one that she begins, and now, by heavy clanging of the forge, it is taking a very definite shape. The more it changes, and the more definitely different do the Americans become, with some manners and customs

the harder will it be for tnem and other people to understand each other, and be sympathetic and in kind harmony with each other. We are often untactful in our manner towards them. It is a mistake to persist with the idea that they are our cousins, and that thus the sentimental tag about blood being thicker than water should apply, and that in last resort a war between Britain and America is “ inconceivable. If Britain and America ever did completely understand each other, so that their points of' view were identical and their mutual sympathy complete, then thej r and all other nations might scrap their tools of war. But these two peoples will for long find it difficult to' appreciate each other, because their mentalities and the nature and quality of their personal human forces are so different. We must realise intelligently that, even as between two individuals of a family, the instincts and attitudes, likings and dislikings, arising from fundamental differences of conceptions, tastes, and feelings may be so highly contrasted and the points of view rendered so different that an appreciable part of a civilisation seems to intervene. Greater differences of instinct and taste, things fundamental to the view and practice of life, may and probably have arisen between our old Europe and the unmatured America than are suspected, and are not to be.

Foolishly Dismissed as Eccentricities. How then are we capable of judging the Americans? They are the fiercest judges of themselves, for in no other country are such bitter things spoken or written as by the American critics, and here again we see that the idea of insult is not the same in America as here. Mow let us consider the interesting case of the development of the idea of continuous and strained effort under difficulties of patience and physical fatigue as it has lately expressed itself by American youth in the way of sitting on the bough of a tree or on the top of a flagpole for days and nights unceasingly, never coming down, proof against mockery and appeal, for weeks at a time, a month and nearly two. Records of such endurance to be broken. Competition between the boys up their respective trees in California and in Arkansas and in New York. Telegrams ■ flashing about the state of the sitters, their nervous signs, the winking of their eyes, the chances of their surrender. All this is taken by the great American people as son; hat crazy stuff, no doubt, yet good to read stuntlike. -L is nonsense to them, certainly, and contributes nothing to so.ving the great national problems of drink and' the Chicago gangs who will arrange the murder of anyone at five hundred dollars a time, and are gradually.assuming control not only over the bootlegging drink but the affairs of public bodies; but they regard it simply with indifference, slightly flavoured with a tenth of one per cent, of appreciation. After all, they may think, here is evidence of the imagination, the enterprise, and the initiative of the American boy, who Will become the American man and control civilisation. Silly? Yes; but in what other way half so good could these desirable qualities, plus the endurance, be so well exhibited? And any other way must just be useless too. But we know that in "Europe such conduct would be quite impossible, and if it appeared would be Instantly Suppressed by Ridicule. The Americans are their own severest critics; they have greater comprehension than we may suspect. One of them, Mr James Truslow Adams, “ an observer of American life,” has just been considering the ways of those who come to Europe, and those who used to come. We ourselves should not have told such dreadful stories. (1) Four Americans drove up to Westminster Abbey, got out, looked at Big Ben. “We have seven minutes; you and Jane do the inside while Mary and Ido the outside." (2) A time-table, with places and dates, had been arranged for a tour. Mother and 'daughter had mislaid-both itinerary and calendar, and in Rome were, overheard w ; rangling. ••No," said the mother, “I am positive this is Rome, because it is Tuesday, and we are here on Tuesday." But the daughter snapped, “ No, it isnt! It’s Monday. I know it is, we are in Florence on Monday.” (3) The critic himself was in the art museum of Amsterdam, enjoying a quiet study of the pictures by Vermeer, especially his “.Little Street ” and “ The Cook,” and he remarks that one of the marked characteristics of Vermeer's work is its quiet tone, and that the room in which they stood was almost as quiet as the “Little Street” itself. Suddenly the sound of a loud voice and shuffling feet as a party of American tourists dashed in, led by a man who, without a pause, continued his rapid-fire story: “ These paintings are by Vermeer —great Butch artisthalf a million dollars has been offered for that one. There is another.” An instant’s pause, and then, "Now, come along I” All in sixty seconds! And the American crhic reflects that there are three things chief.y that Americans have to learn about coming to Europe—scenery, art, and a way of life . . . It is of the greatest importance that we should learn as well as we can how to understand the Americans.