MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD NICOLSON
I HAVE never understood • why the Americans (who as indi-
viduals are more sensitive to criticism than most people) should allow their film industry to distribute throughout the world an endless travesty of the American character. I read recently in the newspapers a statement of the salaries paid to the refugees, immigrants, aliens or citizens who at Hollywood or elsewhere produce American films. These salaries amount to figures such as in the whole history of philanthropy or finance have never been paid to any public benefactor. Yet the American public, with scarcely a murmur of protest, permit these eminent satirists to tell the world what America is really like, and to flood the cinema theatres of Chile or China with pictures which convey and leave the impression that the typical American is either a criminal, a sob- sister or a campus zany. As one who loves the Americans, and who knows them to be in the mass the most warm-hearted, simple, sensible and peace-loving people on this earth, I must raise my foreign voice in protest against this continued falsification of true American values. Anglo-American relations have always been, and always will be, relations of great complexity ; and if co-operation is to be secured in the future, it is not only necessary that our principles and purposes should be understood by the Americans, but that the young men and women of this country should be taught that American principles and purposes bear no sort of relation to the smash-and-swagger nonsense which reaches us from Hollywood.
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