Untitled

Hokitika Guardian, 7 August 1928, Page 2

A well-known English journalist, Sir Charles Highani, who has lately returned to London from a visit to the United States, .says, in writing to tho Daily Mirror, -London, that lie is convinced of the fact that Great Britain is, in every respect, to work in and to live in, the best country in the world. This unfavourable comparison for the United Stales, compelled one to read further, and Sir Charles went oil to say that for the first time in my many visits to the United States I have come back disappointed. I felt last year that children who play in a golden playground, with diamond toys, must ultimately get tired ol them, that a house that is built on sands of gold is no safer a structure than that which is built on any other kind of sand. “My country, ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty,”, no longer seems to be America’s national slogan. Everybody was finding fault. Finding fault with the too many laws and too little enforcement of most of them. Everybody seemed to complain that they were losing their pride of place by having to hide their liquor! This dig at prohibition which is supposed to prevail in the United States is also arresting. But. he Ims several other things to say about the country. Ho writes:—Both from a statistical and from an observation point of view, America has at least three times as many unemployed per capita as we have. 1 travelled u]i tho East Side and the West Side of New York, a,lid saw more dire poverty in tho presumed richest city of the world than T have ever seen in similar districts in my'own country. Frankly, outside of the Middle ’Western States, where the people are living on the land, 1 do not 1 think the people of the United States are altogether happy with their present position. They are commencing to realise that to ignore their foreign customer is bad business, that the only way they can maintain their present high-wage system is by getting rid of their surplus output, yet a more lamentable lack of knowledge of the markets of the world, outside their own country, I could scarcely have believed existed. He has a good deal more to sav, and in the course of his criticism lets in this glimpse of prohibition as it is practised in America. He writes: At a dinner-party given to me at tho Ritz my host, an American, said: “What kind of a country is it, Highnm, when one has to carry their liquor in a handbag, and is afraid almost to drink, when it is poured out at the table?” This, in the Land of the Free, is quite an interesting confession, and is an example of how the prohibition law is observed even in high places. It is manifest from other statements appearing in the press from time to time that America is far from being a prohibited country in practice. In name it is, of course, hut the law is being flouted in such a, way as to make the situatioh quite farcical. One wonders if and when New Zealand is plunged into prohibition the same procedure will result and so nullify any' good which the advocates of prohibition hope to achieve. This is one aspect of the matter which should he well thought over ere tho public have tho opportunity to decide the issue for themselves this year.