SIR,—Mr. Anthony West's little essay, 'The Square Deal,' is a
many-splendoured thing. In a single page of the Spectator he has scolded Professor Denis Brogan for his little essay, 'Never on Saturday'; rebuked his countrymen in general for their rude behaviour in foreign lands (especially the US); praised certain American folkways; and released some startling observations on the economy of the Federal City.
My only real quarrel with Mr. West is about the scorching he gave Professor Brogan. The gentlest of men (and consistently one of the hungriest), Professor Brogan on that Saturday simply wanted to have his dinner. He had been foresighted enough to telephone the restaurant and engage a table, and when he came to claim it he found all tables occu- pied, either by coffee-nursers indifferent to his needs or by whining children who should have been at home raising hell with the baby-sitter.
As for the rude English, I have never met any in Washington. In my limited travels abroad I have also found Mr. West's compatriots well behaved— although I must add that in Rome a number of years ago a major of the Irish Guards told me (in deep confidence) that he was beginning to be fed up with 'all these abroad-chaps.'
Mr. West's admiration for American folkways is itself admirable. Former President Truman's fancy
shirts, Saturday nighters on the town (unless they are sitting at Professor Brogan's table) and huge expensive-looking (though really quite low-priced) cars are 100 per cent American, and therefore 100 per cent OK.
Now I come to 'the sort of meal the ordinary American family eats when it eats out, at a price of two dollars and fifty cents per head.' For that price, Mr. West writes, the family can have `shrimP cocktail, minute steak, peas and beans, baked potato and salad, applie pie with vanilla ice, and a cue (breakfast cup with cream) of coffee.' He neglects only to say where. I should like to have the name of the restaurant offering this Square Meal (or Deal) before it goes, as surely soon it must, into involun- tary bankruptcy.
In his last paragraph Mr. West says that Washing- ton 'is a busy town fully occupied with its im- portant business. It has little time to waste on idle visitors who have merely come to have a look at the wheels going round.' Mr. West is wrong, and, the Board of Trade would be glad (or at least able) to back up my statement. Next to the importation and exportation of paper, the biggest business in the nation's capital is idle visitors.
Or instead of the Board of Trade, ask anY Member of Congress (or any Kennedy).
K. S. Bea"
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