Tired Traveler

TWO WORLDS--Lester Cohen--Coviet, Friede. ($3.50).

When Hawthorne wrote his grim Glimpses of English Poverty he started a tradition for U. S. authors of travel books which has persisted ever since. Brooding, melancholy, suspicious of the claims of foreign patriots, Hawthorne found little to cheer him except the occasional kindness shown by slum children to children still smaller. Critic Edmund Wilson was writing in that classic, if somewhat astringent, mood when last month he offered his skeptical impressions of the U. S. and the U. S. S. R. in Travels in Two Democracies. For most of his long (412 pages) Two Worlds, Lester Cohen also adopts the tired tone of his predecessors, finding little to awaken his enthusiasm, much to depress him in his glimpses of poverty in many lands. Bright exception to his historic pessimism is his excitement about the Soviet Union.

Lester Cohen was born 34 years ago in Chicago, wrote a novel of department-store life (Sweepings) which became a bestseller, then settled in Hollywood to write for the movies. He says in Two Worlds that after years of this work he set forth "bound for the beauty and wonder of the world, and a better understanding of our troubled, chaotic time." With his wife he went first to France, then to England, where he listened to debates in Parliament about fascism, then to Russia, Turkey, Greece, Palestine, Egypt, Ceylon, India, China, Japan. Since they traveled over conventional paths and by conventional methods, they had few adventures, were interested in the normal life in different classes rather than in picturesque or exciting exceptions. The Russia they saw has come to be a familiar land to readers of travel books, a country of new cities, new buildings, new plans, of confusion, enthusiasm, inefficiency. Lester Cohen's most refreshing Russian experience was his visit to a model self-governing prison colony at Lubertze. There the prisoners were given vacations, were punished by being expelled. Despite Lester Cohen's enthusiasm for the Soviet Union, he was distressed by the beggars he saw on the streets, encountered many citizens who grumbled at the way things were going.

Best part of Two Worlds deals with China. Lester Cohen had wanted to find out something definite about the Chinese Soviets in the interior, had even contemplated trying to visit them. But after he had lived in Shanghai, Nanking, Soochow, Peiping, met an anti-Japanese volunteer who used a cigaret tin for a gas mask, seen "bandit-artists" being led off to jail because their pictures ran counter to government decrees, been offered a Chinese virgin for $17, his desire to learn more about the Chinese revolutionists left him. Day after day he thought he could see the social fabric wearing away, and "at moments it seemed that anyone, almost anyone, could have led these people on."

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