THE WHIRL OF THE WORLD

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 348, 26 March 1910, Page 10

THE WHIRL OF THE WORLD

(By J. Foster Eraser)

The old lady's description, "Vulgarity is what other people are guilty of/' can be adapted. It is never our own town nor our own country that is slow. Slowness is always to be found in other towns and other lands. Thus the Chicago man is sure the New Yorker is behind the times. The New Yorker says he cannot keep awake in Liverpool, the Liverpolitan is sure to go at a crawl in London, the Londoner smiles at the sluggishness of the Liverpolitan. The Liverpolitan knows he is quite as lively as the Xew Yorker, and the 'New Yorker will tell you he gets through twice as much work as the Chicago man, though he does not talk hair so much about it. Now the reason the men of one town think those of another town too slow to die is that we are all parochially patriotic and we are prone to notice the shortcomings of the other place. Also, being strangers, we bump again=t corners and we remember the disagreeable things and accept as a matter of course the things which are all right.

The slowness of the Briton is a standing jest among Americans, yet for dawdling, 'Dead-March-in-Saul-" slowness I have never in any part of the world met a more creepsome person than the American waiter. He is absolutely the slowest thing on earth. Some years ago a spry American started a quick-lunch restaurant in the Strand. I patronised it twice. I thought it must have been a joke, for in dilatoriness it could not be beaten. Other dull Britons must have thought the same, for the place had to be shut up.

American lifts—they call them elevators over there for short—travel at lightning speed, while English lifts go gently as though the liftman wanted to show respect for the corpse. Englishmen when in a hurry do not stay for the lift. But I have seen an American fool round for two minutes waiting for an express elevator to take him to the next storey, when he could have run up the steps in twenty seconds. The English business man certainly seems low. He is not always in his shirt sleeves, jumping, racing, showing the tremendous hustle of the American business man. Yet at the end of the day lie has got through just as much work.

The two men are both working, but their methods are different, although to the casual or superficial onlooker the American is a tremendous slogger and the Englishman a trembling sluggard.

Climate counts for much, and across the Atlantic is a "brisk, bracing climate. There are no two provincial towns in England where there is more r ousinpss shrewdness than in Manchester and Liverpool. But to say the business men there are quicker than those in London seems strange to me, who do not belong to either of the three places. T ask who are the men at the head of the (Treat concerns in London? Make a little investigation, and four out of five are provincial men drawn to the hub of "ommeree because of their superior attainments. It is idle to think that the best ivm attracted to London slow down when ther rrpt to positions of prominence, or that they allow those under them to potter about in a way to stir the derision of week-enders from Liverpool or Manchester.

After all. there arises the interesting question whether the nation that can do things quickest is really the most civilised nation.

The tendency is to accept the country which hag the swiftest steamboat service, the largest number of recordbreaking .express trains, newspapers that turn out half a million copies an hour, wireless telegraphy and telephone deTelopment, might caravan-series, places of entertainment with movable stages—everything that has come to be reckoned aa "progress"—as the most happy and civilised country. | But is whirl progress? Are we more civilised because we can journey from ' London to Edinburgh in eight hours in- | stead of eight days? Are we really any I 'happier because we can get a telegraphic I reply from Australia between breakfast I and lunch instead of a reply letter tak- [ ing the better part of a year? ' I was once "blowing" to a Chinese ', mandarin about London, its -under- | ground railways, its telephones, its posUtal services, its throngs of commercial I men in the city. He listened patiently, 1 and then he floored me with the remark, -'Yes, you British people are clever mechanics, but you are not civil- ■ ised like the Chinese." : All things which count for quick- ' ness are the outcome of brains reared lin a temperate zone.' We are taking ! those things to parts of the world : where the climate and mental powers J of the people are disposed toward doing : things quietly and without haste. They , are alien inventions suitable to an alien ' people. So when we hear about Easti ern races refusing to accept machinery j to do things quickly it is not only pre- | judice that we knock against, but genI erations of ingrained temperament. We say "Step lively!" The Turk says ' "Yarash!" (Go slowly). ! The reason the American is couI sidered quick is becouse he is a trans- ' planted individual, strong -ind enter- ) prising in original race, but put into , another land which is stimulating and : invigorating. J There is still the feeling among the I Americans that they have to prove ! themselves to the rest of the world. Wo ! in Britain nurse the thought that we have already done that, and we can move more leisurely. The great men of the world have j never been runners round. They have been slow, deliberate, always decisive, ! and knew exactly where the next step ! was taking them. i Compared with ourselves the Ger- [ mans arc cumbrous, heavy and dull. Tt | would be absurd, however, to say they ! are slow. They are practical, and their ! movements are ever forward. The French are bright, acute, sprightly. They have no equals. Thev ought to be trie quickest people. They are. not. Much of their haste is effervescence. ,- The Italian will not hurry because j he lives in ton genial and caressing an ' atmosphere. ! The Russian cannot hurry, because he ,4S Muscovite, and therefore pnrtisllv • Oriental.