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Another visiting journalist, France's Louis Martin-Chauffier, last week summed up the U.S.: "Good dough without yeast." Wrote he in the Paris Liberation: "American society is tough, commanded by the tough law of profit, by the even tougher law of the struggle for existence, reducing man either to a machine or to a nervous being straining simultaneously for the conquest of comfort and for self-defense. . . . "
After the fatigue of the day, the American has no taste for the leisure of his evenings or his holidays. Either he has his bed; or radio, a movie, whiskey. . . . Above all, no thinking. One escapes from reflection, meditation, solitude. Yet, what is civilization if not the proper use of leisure?"