SEEING THE WORLD

An editorial in the June Forum attacks the grim problem of employment facing so many of the alumni of 1932 by suggesting that the well-to-do graduates spend at least two years abroad "exploring the minds and strange conduct of the very different peoples who make our planet so much unalike." The editor cites the fact that the number of men from the Harvard class of 1932 who intend to enroll in the graduate schools is ten percent greater than that of the class of 1926 who remained for post-graduate study. If as many as possible of these men would devote their time and money to travel with a serious purpose, the argument runs, America would enjoy the same beneficial results which manifest themselves in the English and the Scandinavians, the two most traveled and most enlightened races of Europe.

Of course such a proposal posits that the time will be spent in definite study. The bottle-fed tours conducted by Cook, the flying trips to Europe extensively advertised among the intelligentsia which outline a day in Paris, including visits to "the Louvre, Eiffel Tower, Napoleon's Tomb, the Invalides (sic), Luxembourg Gardens, the Trocadero, the Cathedral of Notre Dame, and to Versailles" with "remaining free time to be taken up by visits to the theatre, the Opera, shopping, etc.," such trips are culturally worthless. They serve only to while away the long hours of retired nutmeg manufacturers, and provide the thin veneer of background to match the slurred R's of the midwestern matron. The refuge for Americans too far developed for the rubber-neck wagon excursions, however, is the American colony in Paris, which has its annex on the Cote d'Or, and which is equally empty of intellectual nourishment and stimulation.

If travel as a bridge over the depression is to bring any real advantages, be young avoiding the evil of overcrowding the professions, a new fashion for the "American in Paris" must be developed, and the Gershwin tradition abandoned: Americans, like the rude British, have been in the habit of carrying their bath-tubs and their customs with them in their peregrinations; serious study of foreign life can be made only if the traveler lays aside his attitudes, and adopts those of his hosts, as he adopts their language. When the American student is willing to do this perhaps he will be able to absorb some of the maturity of the people whom he studies, and transfer it to his native soil.