TOO DESTRUCTIVE A FORCE.

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 57, 4 September 1926, Page 21

TOO DESTRUCTIVE A FORCE.

Again he has something to say of New York itself: "It gives us nothing. It picks the brains and talent .of the world. No New Yorker does anything great, not while he lives in the city. It is too destructive a force. Our best writers don't live here. Our coming men are all coming from the West. Apart from the stage all the artists we hear are outsiders. Outsiders make this city.. It breeds nothing great of its own. That is its queer distinction. Don't; you know the saying that only Ikes, dagoes, and Micks are ever born in it? But it has the queer power of stimulating the outsider: for a time, only for a time." And this is Christine's opinion of the city. She is talking to a young Englishman who has mentioned the first thing that appealed to him most. "They are so awfully kind, aren't they? I have not had a meal alone since I landed. They even ask you out to breakfast. Reminds me of Oxford."

"Yes, New York is i-ind, and for that much may be forgiven it. We are driven to that in self-defence. There is nothing but ourselves. We get nothing from Nature. There is no Nature. We are terrified to death to be -alone. You walk about and look up and you will see why. It would be a queer feeling to be alone in a street here. We need the warmth and aliveness of crowds against these buildings." "You say 'we.' Are you an American?" . "No, but I am a New Yorker. If you stayed here long enough you would understand. This city . . .oh, well, one can't describo it, it is like Babylon was, I suppose. But it gets you down in the end, wears you out. If the author has allowed some of her characters to show up the worst features of American life, she has on tho other hand photographed for us people of taste and refinement. She has shown us the inside of some real homes outside New York, where tho spirit of modesty and simplicity is marked. In Christine herself we have the British Empire type of woman as distinct from the Englishwoman, and a judgment of the Americans is perhaps left more safely with the former than the latter. Some people may find "The Besieging City" difficult reading, but it will be admitted that Miss Mander has put her best work into it and produced something more than a mere novel.