THE CHRISTIAN STUDENT MOVEMENT.

Manawatu Herald, Volume LI, Issue 4444, 26 April 1930, Page 2

THE CHRISTIAN STUDENT MOVEMENT.

MR. & MRS. TROUP’S EXPERIENCES IX AMERICA. Mr. and Airs. Gordon Troup who left X.Z. at the beginning of the year to take charge of the Student Christian Movements Hostel iri Paris, and who are now en route to Prance after spending some time touring and lecturing in the C.S.A. in the interests of the movement write as follows from Xew York under the date of March 2<ith : We caught our first glimpse of llie continent of America about fi a.m. on the morning of February llth, with just such a thrill as Columbus might have known. We might have been approaching the entrance to Wellington Harbour with its dear old hills and slopes.

Hut once within the Golden Gate we began to see.what was distinctly American--neat rows and rows of long wharves and huge wharf buildings all clearly and systematically labelled, huge buildings in ■Xan Francisco city rising above the-hill-toils till the skyline seemed edged with si copies. The immigration officials came aboard and we sat in the background while "American citizens’' were interviewed, and then “lir.st-ola.ss” passengers. However, we finally got ashore a hour 1 1 a.m.

It is strange how the small riInul of red tape makes one feel an alien; bn! it doe-. People have been wonderfully kind and hospitable. eager to share with us all they have, both materially and culturally. and most interested in Xew Zealand. At the same time, one iealir-es what it is to be a foreigner. Now, in India or Europe, where language and colour prepare us, we expect to feel different. Here, outward resemblance and common Anglo-Saxon background make it

rather a shock. Xew Zealanders whom we have met here, some of whom have settled down to per-

manent jobs in America, all seemed to have such a lonely, unowned feeling about their life here. “Ta feel a I home,” said one, “you must learn to understand the background of these people —what has etude them and is making them as they are. Then you can love and understand them and he at home among them.” Hut there is more le il Ilian that; one can grow to

understand all that they have responded to, and still all that one lesponds to, all one's intimate and dearest possessions and responsibilities as New Zealanders are apt to be things apart —undesired, nnappiehcmled, and therefore foreign. Ideally, those doing foreign student work should have visited and "got" all homelands of students, so that they can supply not only fellowship in. say, a French setting, bid also in some measure share with them and appreciate their.ll™ home environments. ■

In Fan Francisco we stayed at Berkeley, distant twenty minutes ferry trip across the harbour. It was our lirst introduction to American homelife, American hospitality, food, speed efficiency, variety, mixture of races, and high standard oj' comfort. Any one of these deserves a chapter in itself. Granted that everywhere we have stayed in homes that are far above the average, we still feel that hoineninking in this land is almost, an art or a seienee evolved by Americans and practised wonderfully. Very little domestic- help is used

—or needed —thanks to modern labour-saving devices, simple preparation of food, and good organisation by housewives. Thus American women are gracious, efcoine places of quiet and rest and companionship. Tn many cases the women take part in many outside activities, thus increasing the variety and fellowship in their homes, ratlier than impoverishing it. American women are gravious, efficient, cultured, sincere, with welltrained and equipped minds. On our first day here we made the acquaintance of “Amos an’ Andy" two present day nation wide radio heroes. They broadcast each night from lUncage, and all America, Horn east to west, young and old, listens in. The cost of broadcasting is all borne bv advertising. -Hong with "Amos and Andy’s” loves and sorrows goes a clear and dignified advertisement for Pepsodent tooth paste. It is reported that children go into the Drug Stores and ask for "Ames an’ Andy tooth paste” and that the Pepsodent people are becoming alarmed for the security of their name. To ns it is

nil perplexing mid incongruous to hear an advertisement for lloor polish, however chastely worded, given out between the movements of ; Beethoven symphony. The radio m everywhere—in every home—even on the trains.

Life is so organised that time ami nervous energy are wonderfully i onsevved. Take the early morning ferry from Berkeley to San Franiiiseo, with a day’s work ahead. The boat, a veritable young palace, slides oni .of its*dock, into which it has lilted like a fountain pen in its cup, us the double-decker gangways twenty feet wide fold up on the dock like tlu* blades of a poc-ket-knife. At once the boat is at full speed; in its white panelled, spotlessly upholstered mirrored interior are a restaurant, bookstall, shoe-black, barber’s shop, so that one may breakfast, read the morning paper and complete one’s toilet en route —if otte can move the necessary organs fast enough. There is efficient public service in everything. To check luggage, label it for the next street address on the agenda, provided bv the student secretary, “call” (i.e. “ring”) the station, a porter and motor va arrive and give you a check which you keep till you exchange it fop

luggage at your next lionu 1 . flic country is immense, the people multitudinous, hut things arc fie efficiently organised that things work and tit’like clockwork. 1 lie service rendered by public officials is .excellent. They take infinite pains and put personal interest into each separate piece of business. One feels that especially in buying a ticket at a station, not from an anonymous hand entrenched behind portholes and bars, but from a person at a counter behind a sign “Mr. Anderson,” whose special job and pride it seems to be to co-operate with you over your trip. Of course one pays on all sides for all this. The dollars simply slip away. One tries to be careful, but lias to give it up because it is an effort for which there simply isn’t time. The cost of living here must he about 10 to 0 compared rwith New Zealand. 'At first sight the comfort and convenience seem rank extravagance, contrivances for ingenuity’s sake. Then one realised that what would be luxury to us in our simpler environment is a necessity to this life which moves so fast and calls for so many adjustments in the course of one day, whether physically, intellectually or emotionally. the mere physical environment changes so quickly and so often, they cope with so many ideas and problems, inquire to respond to the needs and impact of so many varieties of people, that nerve wouldn’t stand the jacket if mechanism, well organised, did not remove some of the detailed labour and planning, which our “Pig Island” independence would demand that we should do for ourselves. In all branches of public service there is (an attitude of dignified self-re-spect, 100 per cent, equality that is very pleasing. As to real “fralentity,” it is probably down to 50 per cent., and there’s only about; 1 per cent, liberty. Each man seems caught in a great machine. It is his part to move perfectly in his own small realm, and lie does it. Hut he is dependent on all the other intricacies of the highly organised mechanism of which lie knows nothing’. Me is helpless except in his own place. There is no such thing as'a “Jack of all trades.” Perhaps such folk are useless from the point of view of efficiency, but they are wonderfully free and human, and do create delightful muddles and produce really homelike makeshifts. We found our tour here so efficiently planned that we were at times almost suffocated by organisation. We’re used to knowing a day’s plans ahead, to having some „ay in their making, knowing whv we’re doing things, and deciding how we’ll do them. In short to taking- at least a little initiative towards the control of our own actions. Mere, our part in the work, we discovered, was merely to move like a gun-eum-limber at the beck and call of the high command. "Our’s not to reason why.” We were taken from meeting to meeting in a ear, told on the doorstep what to speak about, and to whom >.ve were speaking. At. the word ••fire,” off we went. Then, re-load, re-set, re-lay, and repeat. Of „ course, it is a perfect division ol labour, and a great saving ol: nervous energy (once you have submitted to it); but we find it just a little difficult to get, used to being just cogs, and it doesn't allow for much all-round expression of individuality. The great University ot Oaluornia is at Berkeley, a university campus of hundreds of acres in extent, with an enrolment of ( J,OUO students of 40 different nationalities. The magnificence of it is simply astounding. It is laid out in parks, lawns, gardens, running' • brooks, grouped with handsome buildings into a real student settlement, each in a separate building stand: library, hospital, dormitory, fraternity buildings, swimming baths, stadium to seat 80,000 people, Greek open-air theatre, student ciub buildings, cat'eUuia, shops for student requisites (books, barbers, bootblacks), separate buildings, each a palace, for art, engineering, agriculture, science, etc. On the biller limits are poultry farm, forestry lands, and agricultural experimental farms, complete with cows and pigs. Lined up on the roads outside and inside the campus all day long arc thousands of cars waiting while their owners attend classes. “Students appear very smartly dressed, and the women bedizened with paint, powder and curls. It’s rather shocking when .one is used to the plainness of N.Z. life —and countenance among students, our love of battling with the elements and our closeness to old Mother Nature. The emphasis seems to be on artificial things; from outward appearances their life seems so superficial; then one tealiscs that that very judgment; may be superficial. We can’t judge them by our standards. It is merely the logical carrying out of mechanical perfection into the spheres of locomotion, clothes, personal appearance, and personal relationships.

The intermingling' of races is beautiful in its naturalness, staggering in its problem. On our second afternoon at Berkeley, we managed to wander away together and stroll round the campus, trying to take it all in. In true schoolboy fashion, a group of little Japanese “American citizens” were romping home from school. Little flat-nosed Oriental faces, squat figures clad in the denim overalls common to the primary school boy and the varsity fresher, schoolbags slung over their shoulders, shouting to one another jn the sharpest American accents. Little Americans, these, of the second and third generation, with uo koine but America, which, though

owning them legally, regards them as unwanted social on [on s Is.

l u an atmosphere something like that wo spent our -first week in America. On our lirst Sunday wo wspoke to six groups of students and travelled somo 120 miles, telling mostly of New Zealand, 'but also a bit of our future in Paris and the WAS.'.O. If. During the .second week we oscillated along the West Coast of U.S.A., visiting colleges at. San Jose, Stanford, Portland, Eugene, Salem, Tacoma and Seattle. We passed out of the sunny, low-lying lands of California, up through the mountains and great lumber forests, a region fascinating in its lonely wildness and strength. About March Ist we crossed over into Vancouver, with a sense of coming back to our own people. It is wonderful how strong the tie of nationality is. After the polish and new paint and order of U.S.A. it was refreshing to come to a city with a tumbledown wall here and a rubbish dump there. Vancouver, and especially its harbour, is wide and spacious, a tine city with a Jine future. The “Niagara” was in the harbour, and we went down for a last glimpse of her and to send our love home. Our three days in Vancouver were spent in a student week-end camp in a Y.W.C.A. holiday house by the sea and among the huge forest trees, with real good old student discussions like unto N.Z., though the groups ineludod Russians, Indians, and others. We set out on our long journey to Montreal thou— days and nights in the train. We stopped off first at Jasper National Park, thousands of square miles 3,500 feet up, full of mountains, lakes, scenery and hotels, for 24 hours we had been winding up through the Rookies, aloug the great Canadian National Railroad, sometimes carved oul of sheer rock on the sides of ravines, with the partly frozen Eraser River below us. The. bare mountain walls carried, besides our train, only frosted trees and stiff frozen waterfalls. We found a precarious foothold under “hair-poised vocklides,” where the vibration of our going brought showers of rocks on the carriage roof. Small wayside slalions appeared from time to time, with no excuse for their being, or tor Ihe groups of rough houses uvound them, except that the great [rack: must stretch from East to West over “no man’s land.” Our day at Jasper was to be a holiday, ■whieh we needed badly. However, it was bitterly cold and snowy, so that we spent most of our day indoors, even (shades of the hostel rising bell) getting up in time to Irleseope lunch and breakfast .The only outward visible sign of warmth in that white and muffled world was a donkey engine puffing and wheezing in the middle of the road. Its huge firebox is kept stoked night ami day for live months, forcing steam into the water mains, because the ground is frozen at least 14 feet down. For several days we crossed the prairies, bleak find deep in snow, slopping for a day or two at each of Edmonton, Saskatoon ami Winnipeg. These cities are huge and rough, still very close to the Urst pioneering days of Canada. The people are gnarled, almost frost-bitten, in appearance, with [lie sincerity- and strength due to ballliug and little money and the close memory of hardships. We learned much of the great romance of the development of prairie Canada, wound round its stupendous railroad scheme. Winnipeg was the end of onr officially scheduled travel in Canada. The continuous travelling ami encountering- of new people, and environments made us just ready for a few days incognito; so we decided to take in Toronto, Niagara Falls and Montreal in this way, travelling leisurely by day to enjoy the country, selecting really cheap old “pubs," revelling in the shudders of some of our American hosts, liad they known, and having a few hours to poke about the streets in each place, eat a peanut, and flatten a nose against a shop window. We had four hours at Niagara Falls, gazing at its ceaseless variety of intinitely falling water, enveloped in its power and i'n 111 less ness, its purity and vital certainty. It was worth going to experience just that. In a great lift we were borne down a hundred feet and more, enveloped in oilskins and giimbooLs, and let out on a rock-hewn balcony right underneath and behind the cascading water. The spray almost freezes on our face, and we seem whirled into the very inner being of the tiling.

The peace of our stay there was rather marred by the horrid realisation that in the luggage we had checked on ahead to Albany, New Tork State, was our passport; securely tucked in the wee “document bag.” How to get over the American border to it, yet without it'/ We got back to Toronto half an hour before the train with our said luggage arrived in Montreal, and thanks to the efficiency of this land, were rescued from this muddle. Toronto phoned Montreal to hold up at Albany cheeked baggage Nos. pending arrival of owners. Next day we found our baggage waiting at Montreal, dug up the passportand let the rest go on to Albany. Nothing could equal the care and respect with which property is treated on this continent. (Canada is a great mixture of races, inevitably blending their cultures and personalities and adapting themselves to the spacious , rigorous conditions of this taskmas - ter —new environment. It’s giving Canada a real national personality, as distinct front Britain. Talking of New Zealand and our own m»- *

lional hoioogciiiety, we unwillingly called ourselves “British colonials." Their astonishment revealed Hull I hey would never have applied Ihe same lerm In ibemselves. They feel Iliemselves lighling- lo freedom from the British —and American —mind, view, and voice, in the world of nations. “Home" doesn'l mean Britain In I hem, if means Canada. Now Ihe end of our American Iraveiling is in sight, and we’re settled for n few more days in a beau - l iful apartment, in the most fashionable avenue in New York, trying to live up to special bathroom, shoals of maids, liftmen, porters, chauffeur, cars a I the door and dinner in evening dress. Mr. and Mrs. Raker are the most hospitable, kind and linsnobbish people despite their wealth. We marvel that wealthy Americans manage to remain so line, with all their luxury. Those we have met seem to feel a real stewardship for I heir possessions.

Warned all Ihe way across Ihe continent that we should find New York a hectic, screaming, overwhelming turmoil of traffic, business, dirt and human insects, we are agreeably surprised. Us main part is enclosed on Manhattan Island, with long avenues running north and south and short streets running crossways. Both are in almost all eases numbered eonseeul ivcly, so 11ml, you eatiT help finding your way in ihe morsel fourteen miles by aboul three which is so treated. True, the stroois are blocked with careering fleets of motor ears, lowering lorries like battleships and buses like liners. Trams clang along beside us, elevated trains scream and hammer overhead, while several layers of subways rumble underneath. Bui all is so perfectly controlled that the nrl of using il is a .fascinating game. We’re sorry mb to have been able lo visit the real slam areas, though we have glimpsed a little of it.; iior lo have visited the foreign areas, nor much of the suburbs. Our days have been filled with seeing people connected with student work, the great Rock.feller Student International House here, shopping, finding our way round subways and down lo Wall Street, which was great fan, going lo one or two “shows," gazing wide-eyed at the lowering buildings or at the marvellous lighting effects of ihe groat theatre district of Broadway. It's no use trying to describe it. . . you probably wouldn't believe us. Yesterday we lunched at the Bankers’ Flub, on merely the lOlli Hour of a building, and from a. balcony we stared up at a new 72 storied building with its lop looking fuzzy with delicate t.rai cry of scaffolding', literally blurred in cloud. East week we attended the National Fonneil of (Jirisi.ian Associations of U.S.A. They were the

"joiqi for whom, ami among whose constituency we have been working since we landed. We had lo sum up and give our impressions of the S.t'Al. as we had seen it. in America. It. was ditlienlf. —difficult first of all to form any sane amt useful criticisms and appreciations, more di I’ll - cull, still to say l hem so as lo be honest and helpful, bid not to appear critical. We feel that Americans are very sensitive to criticism, and very introspective, feeling lluil everyone is looking at Ihem. America is like a young adolescent with its charm and shyness, while New Zealand is like

a child of six, objective, miselfcon scions, and unscirrealising by com I larison.