Letter from a Friend

Among British correspondents in the U.S., the London News Chronicle's sallow, serious Robert Waithman was outstanding for his enthusiasm. He liked America, knew more about it than most natives, wrote sympathetically of its powers, fevers, and weaknesses.

Called home after eight years to write a News Chronicle column on British affairs, Bob Waithman published an open letter to Stuart Gelder, his successor on this side of the Atlantic. Said Waithman:

"[You will find in New York that] what the advance advertising did not mention was the ugliness of the fire escapes ... or the noise and grime and smell of the subways, or the scores of desolately unbeautiful cross-town streets. . . . What is true of New York is true of America itself. All of it together, the splendid, shoddy, calm and frenzied are one thing.

"Almost everybody who wants to say something is given a hearing in America.

. . . The wise and honest can use the system to instruct and lead the people. The shallow and self-interested can use it to confuse and mislead.

"You may be fascinated by the ferocity with which private enterprise is defended in America. Communism is not merely detested; it is feared as, long ago, the plague was feared. ..."

Explorer's Reward. For a new correspondent. Bob Waithman continued, the U.S. would be a problem in exploration and discovery:

"Read a little American history and go out and see the country. It is as big as all of Europe . . . but every mile is worthwhile.

"It is easier, after you have seen . . . the cities and the serene little towns . . . the vast, unpeopled prairies, the forests and the deserts, to understand why the pioneers who pushed the frontier westward . . . should have felt a great pride and joy in the free land they were building.

"It may be that generations of Americans yet to be born will take a different sort of pride in their nation's power and influence in the world. . . . Now, Americans look back on the still-recent years when every man in free competition might make his fortune. . . . This was life as they wanted it--wide open, thrilling, rewarding.

"Nobody who has read the American story, and stood on the prairies under the limitless sky and talked to the kindly people in the far-away towns will want to deride the wistful longing of Americans for things as they were.

"He will understand that this sentiment goes down very deep, and that it is at the roots of American conservatism and nationalism and was at the roots of the old isolationism. And however wrong he may feel the American conclusions to be, he will never make the worst mistake. The worst mistake is to be persuaded that those who disagree with you do so from evil motives."

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