(3 of 5)
THIS COUNTRY OF YOURS — Morris Markey—Little, Brown ($3).
On the theory that a forest is "simply an accumulation of trees." Reporter Morris Markey "got into a Ford and set out to call" on his countrymen at home. He wanted to know what the U. S. is really like. He traveled 16,000 miles, interviewed hundreds of ordinary U. S. citizens. In this stimulating and depressing report he sets down what he found, draws his conclusions. Some of his findings:
192 houses of ill-fame in two city blocks in Pittsburgh.
A U. S. Senator who got drunk at a club in Chicago, made his stock speech in favor of Prohibition.
A Hollywood party at which he exclaimed, "It's all papier-mache!" poked his finger at the wall, found it was all papier-mâché.
A woman on the West Coast who admitted making about $3 an hour by pretending to be stranded in a gasless car, begging a gallon from chivalrous passers by.
Some of his conclusions:
"The press is competent, efficient, clever —and it is without ideal, without basic virtue, without the will to be right in its thinking or bold in its expression of thought.
"... I came to the conclusion that Christianity is hardly to be considered at all as a force in American life, in directing its current or its desires. . . . The ancient virtues are no longer taught in our country. Children are not reared to the stern chant of goodness. They climb haphazardly into adult life. . . . They are not immoral. They are simply without morals, save for those instinctive and defensive morals which survive unconsciously from more harshly ordered generations.
"I cannot think of a time or a place in all history wherein so few restraints, so few rules, were laid upon creative art ists. I cannot think of a time or place wherein the rewards were so certain.
"In every part of the country I found an acceptance of the fact that our government has broken down. . . . We cannot be a nation in the true sense because we have no national ideals, no national aims. . . . And so. ladies and gentlemen, I give you my country: America — a wilderness crying for a voice."
The Author. Like most professional New Yorkers, Morris Markey (pronounced Markee) reached Manhattan by gradual progression from smaller centres. He was born in Alexandria, Va., schooled in Richmond. He worked in Savannah. New Orleans, Texas, served with the A. E. F. He became a reporter in Atlanta, moved to Newark, crossed the Hudson to enter the city room of the late great New York World. He became the foremost reporter-at-large for The New Yorker, whence Editor Otis L. Wiese lured him to McCall's. Some of This Country of Yours ran in McCall's. His one novel, The Band Plays Dixie, he described as "mighty pretty critically, but didn't buy many biscuits." Tall, blond, blue-eyed, pink-cheeked, he talks well, particularly when stimulated. He thinks the secret of living successfully in New York is a "decent selfishness," has decided that most people go there for "freedom they really have not the faintest notion what to do with."
Cuba Libre