PROFESSOR PALMER'S BROADCAST

New Zealand Listener, Volume 21, Issue 543, 18 November 1949, Page 7

PROFESSOR PALMER'S BROADCAST

Sir,-I listened with interest to Dr. Laurence Palmer’s impressions the. other night and: have observed with at least equal interest the stir in the editorial colums of The Listener. I found his talk stimulating and provocative. What I was chiefly aware of, however, as his talk went on, was a growing feeling of sympathy for Dr. Palmer’s state of mind. I, too, have been a sojourner in a strange land. In 1927 I spent two months foot-loose in the United States, mostly in Boston and up country in Virginia. The’ Sacco-Vanzetti

trail was in its closing stages and I also saw the fiery cross of the Ku Klux Klan in a small village off the Shenandoah Valley. What stuck in my mind in either case was the blank wall a stranger met in attempting to make enquiries. When my time came to leave I was glad to be returning to a country that didn’t do things that way-and yet I left many friends and I know that is not the whole story. There is far more to the American way of life than ruthlessness. I would say that three months is just long enough to sharpen the critical faculties, and this is why the comments of the unacclimatised visitor are so valuable. It would be unreasonable to expect from him the whole picture, but it does not follow that his impressions are to be disregarded. To mix metaphors, it is hard for a guinea pig to see the wood for the trees and harder still for an ostrich.

ERITA

(Havelock North).