Aspects of England:
Having been away for what seems like an eternity from my home country, I was struck by the following aspects, which might also be of interest to those States side who might be thinking of visiting.
(1) Immigration:
I could not help being struck by the dreadful carelessness with which people are admitted into England.
"Do you want to know," I asked one of them, "whether I am a polygamist?"
"No, sir," the immigration official said very quietly.
"Would you like me to tell you whether I am fundamentally opposed to any and every system of government?"
The man seemed mystified. "No, sir," he said. "I don't know that I would."
"Don't you care?" I asked.
"Well, not particularly, sir," he answered.
I was determined to arouse him from his lethargy.
"Let me tell you, then," I said, "that I am an anarchistic polygamist, that I am opposed to all forms of government, that I object to any kind of revealed religion, that I regard the state and property and marriage as the mere tyranny of the bourgeoisie, and that I want to see class hatred carried to the point where it forces every one into brotherly love. Now, do I get in?"
The official looked puzzled for a minute. "You are not Irish, are you, sir?" he said.
"No."
"Then I think you can come in all right." he answered.
(2) Conversation on Trains:
My experience of travelling with a fellow passenger in a compartment of an English train. I should have known, of course, that I must on no account speak to the man. I should have let down the window a little bit in such a way as to make a strong draught on his ear. Had this failed to break down his reserve I should have placed a heavy suitcase in the rack over his
head so balanced that it might fall on him at any moment. Failing this again, I could have blown smoke at him or stepped on his feet under the pretence of looking out of the window. Under the English rule as long as he bears this in silence you are not supposed to know him. In fact, he is not supposed to be there. You and he each presume the other to be a mere piece of empty space. But let him once be driven to say, "Oh, I beg your pardon, I wonder if you would mind my closing the window," and he is lost. After that you are entitled to tell him anything that you care to.
(3) Government and Politics of England
Let us start with the House of Commons: for no description of England would be complete without at least some mention of this interesting body. Indeed for the ordinary visitor to London the greatest interest of all attaches to the spacious and magnificent Parliament Buildings. The House of Commons is commodiously situated beside the River Thames. The principal features of the House are the large lunch room on the western side and the tea-room on the terrace on the eastern. A series of smaller luncheon rooms extend (apparently) all round about the premises:while a commodious bar offers a ready access to the members at all hours of the day. While any members are in the bar a light is kept burning in the tall Clock Tower at one corner of the building, but when the bar is closed the light is turned off by whichever of the Scotch members leaves last. There is a handsome legislative chamber
attached to the premises from which the House of Commons took its name. The House is called together at very frequent intervals to give it an opportunity of hearing the latest legislation and allowing the members to indulge in cheers, sighs, groans, votes and other expressions of vitality. After having cheered as much as is good for it, it goes back again to the lunch rooms and goes on eating till needed again.
Looking around to find just where the natural service of the House of Commons comes in, one
is inclined to think that it must be in the practice of "asking questions" in the House.Whenever anything goes wrong a member rises and asks a question. He gets up, for example, with a little paper in his hand, and asks the government if ministers are aware that the Khedive of Egypt was seen yesterday wearing a Turkish Tarbosh. Ministers say very humbly that they
hadn't known it, and a thrill runs through the whole country. The members can ask any questions they like. One member might ask the government whether they were aware that herrings were being imported from Hamburg to Harwich. Another member might rise and ask the government whether they considered Shakespere or Moliere the greater dramatic artist.The government might reply that ministers were taking this under their earnest consideration and that a report would be submitted to Parliament. Towards the close of the evening a member could rise and ask the government if they knew what time it was. The Speaker, however, may rule this question out of order on the ground that it had been answered before.
The Parliament Buildings are so vast that it is not possible to state with certainty what they do,
or do not, contain. But it is generally said that somewhere in the building is the House of
Lords.When they meet they are said to come together very quietly shortly before the dinner hour, take a glass of dry sherry and a biscuit, reject whatever bills may be before them at the moment, take another dry sherry and then adjourn for two years.
The public are no longer allowed unrestricted access to the Houses of Parliament; its approaches are now strictly guarded by policemen. In order to obtain admission it is necessary either to (A) communicate in writing with the Speaker of the House, enclosing certificates of naturalization and proof of identity, or (B) give the policeman five pounds. Method B is the one usually adopted. On great nights, however, when the House of Commons is sitting and is about to do something important, such as cheering, or welcoming a new lady member, it is not possible to enter by merely bribing the policeman with five pounds, it takes ten pounds.The English people complain bitterly of the rich Americans who have in this way corrupted the London public. Before they were corrupted they would do anything for sixpence.
This peculiar vein of corruption by the Americans runs like a thread, through all the texture of English life. Among those who have been principally exposed to it are: chauffeurs,hotel porters, bell-boys, railway porters and guards, all taxi-drivers, curates, bishops, and a large part of the peerage.
The terrible ravages that have been made by the Americans on English morality are witnessed
on every hand. Whole classes of society are hopelessly damaged. Till the Americans came to
England the people were an honest, law-abiding race, respecting their superiors and despising
those below them. They had never been corrupted by money and their employers extended to them in this regard their tenderest solicitude. Then the Americans came. Servants ceased to be what they were; butlers were hopelessly damaged; hotel porters became a wreck; taxi-drivers turned out thieves; curates could no longer be trusted to handle money; peers sold their daughters at a million dollars a piece or three for two. In fact the whole kingdom began to deteriorate till it got where it is now.
Now the odd thing about this corruption is that exactly the same idea is held on the other side of the water. It is a known fact that if a young English Lord comes to an American town
socially the whole place goes to pieces. Girls whose parents are in the oil business and who used to call their father "pop" begin to talk of precedence and whether a Duchess Dowager
goes in to dinner ahead of or behind a countess scavenger.
Also it is of interest that somehow there always seems to be a peculiar interest about English political questions that we don't find elsewhere. The English, can always dig up some kind of political topic of discussion that has a real charm about it. One month you find English politics turning on the Oasis of Merv and the next on the hinterland of Albania; or a member rises in the Commons with a little bit of paper in his hand and desires to ask the foreign secretary if he is aware that the Ahkoond of Swat is dead. The foreign secretary states that the government have no information other than that the Ahkoond was dead a month ago. There is
a distinct sensation in the House at the realisation that the Ahkoond has been dead a month without the House having known that he was alive. The public who have never heard of the
Ahkoond bare their heads in a moment in a pause to pray for the Ahkoond's soul. Then the cables take up the refrain and word is flashed all over the world, The Ahkoond of Swat is Dead.
But when the English introduce a really large question as the basis of their politics they like to select one that is insoluble. This guarantees that it will last. Take for example the rights of the Crown as against the people. That lasted for one hundred years,—all the seventeenth century. In the US they would have called a convention on the question, settled it in two weeks and spoiled it for further use. In the same way the Protestant Reformation was used for a hundred
years and the Reform Bill for a generation.
(4) The British and the American Press:
This is where the greatest difference lies between the British newspapers and those of the United States.In America the great thing is to get the news and shout it at the reader; in England they get the news and then break it as gently as possible. Hence the big headings,the bold type, and the double columns of the American paper, and the small headings and the general air of quiet and respectability of the English Press.
The English newspaper is designed to be read quietly, propped up against the sugar bowl of a man eating a slow breakfast. The American paper is for reading by a man hanging on the straps of a subway, by a man eating at a lunch counter.
In other words, there is a difference of atmosphere. It is not merely in the type and the lettering, it is a difference in the way the news is treated and the kind of words that are used. In America they use such words as "gun-men" and "joy-ride" ; in England they prefer "person of doubtful character" and "motor travelling at excessive speed" . In America they call a murderer a "thug" or a "gun-man" . In England they simply call him "the accused who is a grocer's assistant in Houndsditch." That designation would knock any decent murder story to
pieces.
Hence comes the great difference between the American "lead" or opening sentence of the article, and the English method of commencement. In the American paper the idea is that the reader is so busy that he must first be offered the news in one gulp. After that if he likes it he can go on and eat some more of it. So the opening sentence must give the whole thing. Thus, suppose that a leading member of the United States Congress has committed suicide.This is the way in which the American reporter deals with it;
"Seated in his room at the Grand Hotel with his carpet slippers on his feet and his body wrapped in a blue dressing-gown with pink insertions, after writing a letter of farewell to his
wife and emptying a bottle of Scotch whisky in which he exonerated her from all culpability in his death, Congressman A. Tigg was found by night-watchman, Henry T. Smith, while making his rounds as usual with four bullets in his stomach."
Now let us suppose that a leading member of the House of Commons in England had done the same thing. Here is the way it would be written up in a London newspaper.
"The Grand Hotel, which is situated at the corner of Millbank and Victoria Streets, was the scene last night of a distressing incident."
"What is it?" thinks the reader. "The hotel itself, which is an old Georgian structure dating probably from about 1750, is a quiet establishment, its clientele mainly drawn from business men in the cattle-droving and distillery business from South Wales."
"What happened?" thinks the reader.
"Its cuisine has long been famous for the excellence of its boiled shrimps."
"What happened?"
"While the hotel itself is also known as the meeting place of the Surbiton Harmonic Society and other associations."
"What happened?"
"Among the more prominent of the guests of the hotel has been numbered during the present Parliamentary session Mr. Llewylln Ap. Jones, M.P., for South Llanfydd. Mr. Jones apparently came to his room last night at about ten P.M., and put on his carpet slippers and his blue dressing gown. He then seems to have gone to the cupboard and taken from it a whisky bottle which however proved to be empty. The unhappy gentleman then apparently went to bed..."
At that point the American reader probably stops reading, thinking that he has heard it all. The unhappy man found that the bottle was empty and went to bed: very natural: and the affair very properly called a "distressing incident": quite right. But the trained English reader would know that there was more to come and that the air of quiet was only assumed, and he would read on and on until at last the tragic interest heightened, the four shots were fired, with a good long pause after each for discussion of the path of the bullet through Mr. Ap. Jones.
In London glancing at the morning papers, one can get a first impression that the whole world was almost asleep. For example under the item called "Our Chinese Correspondent." it could be explained ten lines down, in very small type, that a hundred thousand Chinese had been
drowned in a flood. And perhaps another little item labelled "Foreign Gossip," under which is mentioned that the Pope was dead, and that the President of Paraguay had been assassinated.
Then of course there is the honour of having accepted and printed a letter to the Times on the most obscure of subjects, but no doubt strongly felt. For example:
To the Editor,
The Times,
London, England.
Dear Sir,
Your correspondence of last week contained such interesting information in regard to the appearance of the first cowslip in Kensington Gardens that I trust that I may, without fatiguing your readers to the point of saturation, narrate a somewhat similar and I think, sir, an equally interesting experience of my own. While passing through Lambeth Gardens yesterday towards the hour of dusk I observed a crow with one leg sitting beside the duck-pond and apparently lost in thought. There was no doubt that the bird was of the species pulex hibiscus, an order which is becoming singularly rare in the vicinity of the metropolis. Indeed, so far as I am aware, the species has not been seen in London since 1680. I may say that on recognising the bird I drew as near as I could, keeping myself behind the shrubbery but the pulex hibiscus which apparently caught a brief glimpse of my face uttered a cry of distress and flew away.
I am, Sir
Yours Sincerely
O.Y. Burton
(Ret'd Major British Army.)"
