"England, Their England"

A lone, large crocodile tear last week stole down a column of the London Times. It was shed for Hollywood movies, which may soon be forced from British screens by a 75% tax on their earnings (TIME, Sept. 22).

"We shall all bear up as manfully as we may," sighed the Times (under the heading "England, Their England"), "but it would be folly to deny that something will be missing from our lives. . . . Neither our climate nor the mouths of our horses are particularly well adapted to the making of westerns, but there is no reason why we should not have a shot at it. As for tremendously bad films about the lives of celebrated musicians, we can turn them out at a pinch, and it may even prove possible to show the reconquest of Burma without enlisting the services of Mr. Errol Flynn.

"There is, in fact . . . only one loss which we must steel ourselves to . . . and that is the Hollywood version of life in Great Britain. And what a loss it is! Never again to see that enchanted or at any rate transmogrified land, wrapped almost all the year round in a dense fog--that will indeed be a deprivation. It was a land which we had all learned to love . . . it had a quaint, dreamlike charm all of its own. Its House of Commons (in which Sir Aubrey Smith almost always sat, often as a duke), though generally rather smaller than our own, was infinitely more animated as well as being better lit. . . . Its policemen, barely discernible as they patrolled the fog-bound streets, resembled our own; but . . . they never took their thumbs out of their belts, and the only traffic they were called on to regulate was an occasional hansom cab.

"Its aristocracy were, though not particularly powerful, numerous and, though stupid, generally condescending; they often had beautiful American daughters. They lived in castles of the very largest size and were much addicted to . . . foxhunting. This was normally carried on in the height of summer (fog being perhaps less prevalent at that season). . . .

"The lower orders, a cheerful lot, wore gaiters in the country, but in London, being mostly costers, dressed in a manner which befitted this calling. The Army, except of course in wartime, consisted almost entirely of senior officers, most of them in the Secret Service. There were two universities, one at Oxford, and the other at Cambridge. Cricket and football were not much played and--possibly as a consequence--there was a great deal of crime.

"But it was a wonderful place, and the only general criticism which can be leveled at the inhabitants is that when, as frequently happened, they met an American, they betrayed an almost complete lack of understanding of the American way of life."

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