"Humiliating Experiences"

Throughout France the name "J. H. Rosny" passes for that of a talented novelist, but in Paris one knows better. When there come strolling down the leafy Champs Elysees, arm in arm, the brothers J. H. H. Boex, 71, and S. J. F. Boex, 68, then it is time to dart forward, shake their hands, and congratulate these two twinkling-eyed old gentlemen on the latest success of Novelist "J. H. Rosny."

They are "he." Together they have written his books in fruitful collaboration. They alone know why his heroes are so often scientists, and even why the love lives of these scientists-in-fiction are so disconcertingly unscientific. They are a dry, shrewd pair, les freres Boex. Last week the elder brother returned to Paris from a tour of the U. S. His comments:

"The Americans abolished slavery for the blacks 60 years ago, but if they continue as they are headed, they will create veritable social slavery for the whites. As it is, a man's body cannot be said really to belong to him in America now.

"It is forbidden for a man to be alone in a hotel room with a woman who is not his wife, sister or mother. A simple kiss in the park is a legal offense. Adultery is actually considered a crime. But that does not keep the Americans from yielding to nature's demands, with the result that there exists a general state of dissimulation and hypocrisy that is rotting the soul of America.

"The struggle between the Wets and the Drys is brutal beyond words. It is the women who give the Drys their ridiculous strength. 'Not caught, not guilty,' say the poachers. That is life in America. By the millions they live as poachers and contrabanders in an atmosphere infected with puritanism, professional spies and amateur informers.

"At the end of the 19th Century the Anglo-Saxon countries were the most liberal in the world. The wind has turned, the English are less free and the Americans are enslaved. Some devil has got them to open the gates of hell. To every traveler, who is forced to submit to the most humiliating experiences from the moment he arrives in America until he leaves, the Statue of Liberty cannot be anything but a farce."