16 FEBRUARY 1940, Page 16

PEOPLE AND THINGS

By HAROLD NICOLSON

IMET a man last Monday who had just returned from 1 lecturing to the universities of America. He had visited nearly all the eastern and fresh-water universities, and many of those in the south and middle west. He had travelled from Maine to Florida and from Chicago to Atlanta, Ga. He had returned (as any sensible person must return) captivated by the good-manners, the zest and the kindliness of Young America. But he had been bewildered by the gap which gapes between their knowledge and their ignorance. " It was as if," he said, " one discovered that a person who could repeat all the trains from Brighton to Victoria, including Saturdays only, but was under the impression that Victoria was a town in British Columbia.