Evening star., 1926-10-31
BY FRANK III. SIMONDS.

|
n debt question? Is the hatred
| - of. the United States one
hears so frequently reported
real is it O. transitory emotion, or
does it threaten to become a lasting
fact? Is it limited to a country, to
| one class of the population? Is 1t
growing or diminishing? Can 1t have
any serious consequences for us .
| These are among the questions which
were in my mind and explain In part
at least my present European trip.
! In answering them / shall draw alike
| upon the experiences of my present
| journey and of the trip made earlier
| in the year which took me from Lon
! don to Rome via Vienna and Buda-
| pest, as the1ater excursion has taken
me through Berlin to Geneva, Paris
! and the Belgian capital.
I came to Belgium after Paris be-
| cause it seemed to me that If there
were one place in Europe where the
memory Of America might linger with
at least semblance of grace 1t
| would be the country in which dur
! ing the war Americans were most
| active in all the directions in which
| the Commission for the Relief of Bel
! gium, the famous &C. r. B." func-
| toned. 1 knew already what was
| the feeling in France, in England, In
| Italy, in many other portions of Eu-
rope, but had the faint hope that
| perhaps in Belgium there was still
something left.
Memory Becoming Dim.
But this was a mistake. The brutal
fact is that in Belgium as in most
| of the rest of Europe, in all of the
| Europe with which we were asso-
| ciated during the war, a single Judg-
ment has been pronounced. 1t does
| not matter much whether you talk
with the simpler people-the men and
women who work mostly with their
! handS-or with the financial leaders,
| with the big people or the little, for
| all, America has come to mean the
| country which is deliberately and de
| signedly exploiting the misery and
poverty of Europe for it's own selfish
| ends. The memory of what we did
| is rapidly becoming dim, has almost
| been obscured by the conception of
what we are thought to be doing. ,
| There are degrees and kinds of re-
i sentiment and bitterness felt toward us
| by Europeans. The British feeling
which, all things considered, is in my
! judgment the deepest and the most in
i tense, discloseS itself only rarely save
as one may see that a certain type
| Of British newspaper gets profit by
| exploiting it. Nevertheless it is al
| ways there beneath the surface, it is a
sort of cold, passiOnless bitterness not
without a measure of contempt. 1t
is conviction that the United States
| has with a clear consciousness of the
consequences set out to wreck not Eu
| rope collectively, but Europe ulti-
mately and Britain primarily.
| If you talk with the business man,
| the financier, the man who more or less
represents the England which is in
| touch with the outside world. his view
| is on the whole quite without rancor.
For him the United States is doing a
| foolish thing, is using a power, which
he comedies has legal warrant in such
fashion as to destroy what might be
q great market and bring down coun
tries which were valuable customers
| In the long last he believes we shall
lose greatly. But back of this calmel
| judgment lies a whole world Of more
or less undisclosed resentment which
is perfectly expressed In the tern
Uncle Shylock."
Britain Is i'm Bad Shape.
Great Britain is engaged in a life
and death struggle for existence. Re
l
as some of the worst in the war, the
whole fabric Of British economic life
is shaken, the coal strike has been q
disaster without parallel, the modnting
OF unemployment is colossal, and rea
solution will be as far away after the
strike as before. Staggering under
the burdens laid by the war and by the
postwar problems the British are con
scious first Of their own dangers and
| second that in the midst of these the
United States has insisted upon g
debt settlement which is draining large
sums from the British treasury, con
tributing to the difficulties of economic
and financial existence, and concomi
family he sees that we are slowly but
surely replacing Britain in a whole
range of world fields.
If you turn to France the situation
Is different, but only in manner. The
BritOn holds us responsible for the
conditions out Of which his difficulties
have arisen.
He holds us responsible for the fail
ure Of Europe to return to anything
like normal existence. The lower you
get in the social stratum the deeper
the hatred, but it does not expires.
itself in any very clear ant
definite manifestation. In France
on the contrary, as the franc
declines, as the cost of liv
ing rises, you have the familiar
spectacle Of something very like riots
directed against the thousands ant
thousands of opulent Americans who
fill the streets, crowd the motor busses
jam the restaurants and emphasize
their general air of unlimited pros
perity by tearing or burning the
wretched franc notes in their hand:
or scattering them like bones to dogs
You have to know little something
OF what the small Frenchman feels
the little man who has saved all hi.
life and invested his scant savings il
government bonds now gone to moth
ing as he sees representatives of the
| country. Yesterday his associate II