HISTORY’S CHESTERTON.

Putaruru Press, 19 January 1928, Page 4

HISTORY’S CHESTERTON.

Mr. G. K. Chdsterton’s noisy lamentation over the Americanisation of, London will make most people suspect that the change is not in London but in Mr. Chesterton. It is not so much that London has become a * nightmare of electric signs and gumcl.ewers as that the sprightly essayist of the ’nineties has become the

weighty oracle—we are speaking quite metaphorically—of 1927. In any case, to talk about “ the American habit of showing off wealth ” is to be conveniently oblivious of the defects of our own people. If anyone cares to consult the back files of Punch he will find that the nouveaux riches of England were as nouveaux eighty years ago as they are now. Nor does it seem fair to borrow electric lighting from the Americans and then grow annoyed because it is used for vulgar purposes. It is very disturbing to know that when Mr. Chesterton looks at the electric signs of London he thinks desperately of leaping from Westminster Bridge, but the situation has many parallels. If we look back across the ages, and have read a little, and possess good memories, we shall see a Mr. Chesterton decorated with woad making disparaging remarks about Roman architecture, a Mr. Chesterton as a plump Hereward the Wake regretting the Norman influence in cooking, a Mr. Chesterton in a slashed doublet condemning with round oaths these new notions in home-building, almost a Mr. Chesterton in tight trousers and mutton-chop whiskers fulminating in the Times against the smelly inventions of Mr. Stephenson. English social life is undoubtedly decaying, but it is as well to remember that it always has been. We have been Saxonised, Normanised, Romanised and Hellenised during our history, to the enriching always of our civilisation, nor is there any reason to fear that we endanger our separate existence every time we sit watching an American film. And if, as Mr. Chesterton thinks, an American invasion of England is in progress, it should also be remembered that the intelligentsia across the Atlantic, Mr. H. L. Mancken, for example, spend their time complaining of the English invasion of America. —Christchurch Press.