DURING the summer of 1929 there was constant going and coming at Château Lerchenborg in Denmark, and in between each arrival and departure a sojourn of as many different sorts of people as the noble estate had ever accommodated. Where for three centuries exclusive noble families had lived and visited, citizens of six nations now stayed and played.
A car circled the courtyard, and a lovely old American lady and her daughter went to their room. The following day they saw two or three cars unload a group of American boys, who occupied a whole wing of the white structure. An American headmaster watched the boys scattered on the lawn in company with a group of English boys. At first they looked one another over hesitantly, but, in shorter time than was expected, they were talking freely, realizing that they had more in common than the history of their respective countries led them to believe. As one of the boys described the scene: "One day an English group arrived. These boys sure were regular fellows. One of our party had been dreading their coming. He confided that he 'hated Englishmen'; but before the party had been at the château an hour he was lying on the grass joking with their leader. He told us later that he had never before known a 'real Englishman.'"
A couple of days later a little group of Norwegian boys and a French boy were on the lawn with the Americans and the English. All among themselves they were foreigners, although it surprised the Americans that Norwegians and Frenchmen could sense national differences. Were they not Europeans and consequently alike? Alike they were, but only in their interests and ambitions, as were the Americans and English boys, too. A group of Jugoslavian boys might at first seem entirely different as they performed their national dances and sang their folk songs, but it was only in looks. They too were like the boys of other nations, occupied with thoughts of athletics, play, individual problems, and future jobs. Socially, educationally, and intellectually speaking, they spoke the same language, although their mother tongues differed.
The adults fitted well into this life and even caught on to youthful activities. An American lumberman, a bank president, and their wives were staging a bicycle race around the courtyard. In the billiard room a tournament was going on between two Norwegian boys, an Indiana youth, and a kind Danish gentleman who did not understand a word of English and never had learned Norwegian. On the front lawn a mixed group of Danish and American ladies were settling the château championship in croquet ; in the farmyard two boys were feeling the effects of the wide backs of a couple of Danish horses, and groups back from fishing and swimming trips those of choppy, cold waves.
At meals, Mrs. Knudsen would enjoy the different groups of foreigners who once more put life into a place which without occupants looked beautiful, but which with them was turned into a cosy international summer home on Danish soil. This change from a lifeless spot of beauty, surrounded by immaculate gardens and traversed by avenues of age-old trees, into a meeting place of friendly modern people was well expressed by one boy in his diary: "The old château itself was at first sight cold and ghostly, but it soon began to seem almost like home. Its tapestry and plaster-of-paris walls, the immense glass chandeliers, the high porcelain stoves, the painted glass windows, and the decorated shutters are relics of an age that lives in glorious memory. Lerchenborg has certainly aided Mr. George Eastman's fortune, because more films were used here than on all the rest of the trip combined. It was a camera's fairyland."
Small and large groups moved in and out of this retreat, adults and boys alike, filled with memories of tourist and hospitality life all over Denmark, Sweden, Germany, and dozens of other countries. A large group of sixty American boys and adults reported back from the Rebild Park. On the Fourth of July they gathered there. The Park was a reservation in Jutland near the town of Aalborg, bought by a group of Danish-born American citizens and incorporated by them to protect its natural scenic beauty and to be the place where they could celebrate their day of liberty. Danish farmer families motored, "biked," or hiked there to meet a couple of thousand Danish-American families from all over the States who returned for the summer to visit relatives in their native land and gather in Rebild Park. Mingling with fifteen thousand people, the touring Americans were seated on the heather-covered hills around 'the large stage at the bottom of the valley. Speeches followed folk dances and music by native fiddlers. A choir of American sons and daughters of Danish immigrants from Nebraska gave a concert, and all the while sturdy, calm, and attentive Danes---men, women, and children---listened in silent respect or gave vent to their feelings in torrents of applause. The Danes did not understand the American speeches nor the Americans the Danish ones, but they appreciated the sentiment and sincerity behind them, particularly the speech of Mr. H. V. Kaltenborn, who was invited to appear on the Rebild program together with the leader of MY FRIEND ABROAD. What most amazed the boys and their adult companions was the fact that a couple of showers only made the throngs put up their umbrellas and that the rain did not chase one Dane away.
In the evening they attended a public party in Aalborg, where the Harvardians, the boys' orchestra, thrilled thousands with their dance music; and the following day some of the adults attended a formal dinner given by the town to the returned immigrants. They enjoyed the united spirit of the natives and those who had become naturalized Americans, yet had not forgotten their old homeland. They enjoyed also the friendly spirit in which the natives met foreigners. A bank president from New York State entered a bank to have a check cashed, and the Danish manager invited him and his whole American family to his home for a friendly chat. And the native degree of honesty! It seemed like Utopia; a diamond ring was lost in the street and returned to its owner within a couple of hours.
The boys of the Rebild Park group reported further about their trip through Jutland to the town of Horsens, where they were entertained by private families and had a round of ever-changing experiences, with motor excursions to Silkeborg and the lake district. They made a stop-over, at the estate of Dr. Poul Larsen, the president of the world-famous F. L. Smidth & Company Cement Works, and enjoyed an entertainment by Count Brockenhuns-Schack at his Barritskov estate, concluding with a bonfire with Danish Boy Scouts. Then there was the memorable night when a couple of thousand Horsens citizens flocked to the park restaurant of By Bygholm Slot to listen to the Harvardians' concert, and saw the boys take leave of their hosts at a farewell dance, memorable to the boys and the citizens and of lasting credit to Mr. Cl. Clausen, the headmaster of the preparatory School, who was in charge of all the Horsens hospitality arrangements.
A few hours later, on their way to Hamburg, they crossed the border of another foreign country with a language different from Danish, with different natives and customs, but alike in its efforts to make foreigners feel at home. This was a little difficult, to be sure, when headquarters were military barracks. It is international history that the stay there was one of the results of the World War; because if Germany had not been compelled to disarm, the barracks would not have been turned over to the youth of Germany and their visiting friends to be used on their hikes and trips. Dormitories were remodeled, showers installed, kitchens and cafeterias established, and the long corridors resounded with the glad shouts of hiking boys instead of the sharp commands of army officers. And what about having detectives as guides? The fact was that the Hamburg police had taken over part of the buildings, and official members of its detective staff played host to the American boys.
This was a new way of seeing Hamburg. The detectives took them through Old Hamburg's narrow streets, with flocks of dirty children and swarms of men and women who never would crash the gates of society except with a crowbar. Without any fear, they peeped into alleys and behind walls which the detectives knew well from many raids, and whose inhabitants knew the detectives equally well. The officers told thrilling stories, too, from the days when Hamburg's City Hall had been riddled by bullets during the German revolution, and pointed out the holes in the walls where the bullets had shattered the plaster and woodwork. German university undergraduates, boys and girls, also accompanied them on sight-seeing trips through the Elbtunnel, to the Michaelis Church, and to the Hagenbeck Zoo, where the animals moved around in their natural environment without any visible barriers; so that it looked as if the tigers would be on your neck in one jump and the snakes up your spine in a minute. The students were with them on the harbor trip arranged by the Hamburg-American Line, and showed with pride the maze of basins and wharves from which Germany conducted her world commerce. They took them to the beautiful Municipal Park, from the terrace of which, during their dinner, they watched countless canoes on the pond, proving that Young Germany had taken to a favorite American sport. At the public swimming pool they realized that practically every Hamburg citizen, from the old Jewish granny to wee little tots, liked the water---or, anyhow, a tan.
One evening they were honorary guests at a German college banquet and dance. At the banquet they were greeted by the chairman of the department of foreign relationships as friends of a nation whose sons had fought their older brothers and fathers in the trenches. Another evening they spent in St. Pauli, Hamburg's amusement center. What fun to have the Tyrolean Band march down the Zillertal Restaurant, serenade a member of the American group, and, according to custom, have him lead the band procession back to the music stand and there conduct the next number. It was that sort of fun in which the German Gemütlichkeit found its true expression---gay, but entirely harmless, in spite of heavy steins. As a final experience, they were taken to the railroad station in police wagons. The detectives did not know then that the passengers whom they treated like honorary guests actually should have been locked up. It was not discovered until they were back at Château Lerchenborg in safety, and their leader had received a bill for nineteen towels marked Hamburg Police Headquarters! This bill required the mailing of a check for the value of the towels, and it was sent with an explanatory letter about the American "disease" popularly called souvenir-hunting.
Groups continually returned to Lerchenborg---nine boys by airplane via Copenhagen, two boys and three adults from a motor trip through Germany, a dozen or two who had been entertained for a week by private families in Denmark, a couple of ladies back from a trip through Norway, and two back from Russia. Other groups or individuals would leave---one for Paris, another for Vienna, and a third for Prague. A mother and a couple of boys were off for the Gøta Canal trip through Sweden; a headmaster with two friends on a motor trip through Denmark; a group of boys to see the grave of Bothwell of Mary Queen of Scots fame; and women teachers of physical education , for the gymnastic institute at Ollerup. A large group of boys was off for Stockholm for a couple of days in this "Venice of the North," and, on their return, stayed in Copenhagen for a while. Here they met other groups. The adults were going sight-seeing in taxis. They had only to show their My FRIEND ABROAD badge and any taxi driver would drive them as often and as long as they wanted to without receiving a dime except for a tip. The boys visited any place they liked in company with Danish university students, who were glad to practise their English on the exponents of the American dialect. These Copenhagen visits were the occasions when the boys learned what really educated young Danes are like, in the shape of Olav Fossum Poulsen ("Olav") and Knud Lendahl ("Lindy"), as the adults too learned it, when these boys and others took them on motor trips in private cars.
In Copenhagen they dropped in at the tea dances in the MY FRIEND ABROAD headquarters at the University Club, or they joined the audiences at the special lectures given by members of the party or by participants in the Elsinore Progressive School Convention, which took place that summer and was attended by several members of the groups. They heard about their own schools from Mr. Harold Nomer and Mr. Stephen Cabot, and about French schools from Mr. Georges Bertier, headmaster of École des Roches, France. They might be interested in national native customs and join the excursion to the island of Amager, with its descendants of Dutch colonists, and see a dignified bank president from East Aurora, New York, get so excited over the quaint folk dances that he rushed about on the stage taking motion pictures of the bride and the bridegroom of the procession, to the delight of the natives and the amusement of the spectators. The program might call for a public festival at Lerchenborg. By train or motorcar they flocked there to join a couple of thousand country people and citizens from the neighboring town, Kallundborg, as spectators at a gymnastic exhibition of a team of Copenhagen society girls and a team of farmers' boys. They marvelled at this typical form of Danish athletics. As one boy said: "The girls showed machine-like precision and the men were simply wonderful. They did everything from unison calisthenics to acrobatic feats." After the performance, all the spectators danced in the courtyard, and the American boys continued at a private party in the ballroom of the château with the daughters of prominent citizens of Kallundborg for partners. On another occasion they met the same girls at a dance at the town hotel and augmented their acquaintanceship with provincial town society.
This life kept going on from late May until late in August. When one group left, another would arrive. They saw a glimpse of one another here or there, and spent a couple of days together before leaving for a new place; but wherever they went, they were always sure of meeting at the château, until Mrs. Knudsen said good-bye to the last guest, locked the last door, and again turned Lerchenborg over to its beauty-sleep.
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One of the purposes of the International Interchange was to present abroad some of the organized activities which occupy American boys at home. In the following two chapters is told how this was done.
MUSIC was first in line for presentation abroad, even with fear of the contention that America had no music, or had imported it from Europe. The boys were asked to bring their favorite instruments, and during five years the answer was one hundred and fifty pieces among six hundred participants. They organized seven orchestras and bands, varying in size from seven to twenty-five members, only one with a professional conductor. It was a question whether the orchestras and bands would be able to produce anything but organized noise or jazz, to use a polite expression.
It became almost a habit to depend on the boys' dance orchestras, and Jim Marshall of Harvard had plenty to do. His trumpet would lead the orchestra at beach and town hotels; at garden parties, students' gatherings, and a farewell dance in Copenhagen. At Odense debs and sub-debs, invited to the Governor's castle, were enchanted by the jazz rhythm; and at another party, given by the Danish boys who had been entertained in America, the snappy tunes stirred memories of the States. What a surprise to dance with Scandinavian girls! Not one was in national costume or doing folk dances. They were stepping almost exactly like American girls. As one of the boys said: "They didn't wiggle as much, but they soon picked that up."
The biggest hit in dance music was made by the Harvardians under the leadership of Roy Lamson of Harvard University. At Aalborg they kept Beyer's Hotel ballroom jammed for several evenings, and Kilden, the popular park restaurant, crowded on ordinary week days, while on the Fourth of July it was filled to overflowing. The hearts and feet of sedate townspeople, store clerks, and Danish flappers alike, beat to the rhythm of the Harvardian syncopation. Their fame spread over Scandinavia. Swarms flocked from the town of Horsens to the park restaurant of Bygholm to hear them at a farewell dance, and in the University Club at Copenhagen they created as much fraternal merriment as the venerable building had ever witnessed. Their greatest achievement, however, was when two thousand townsfolk of Kallundborg and vicinity could hardly be made to leave the dance floor in the courtyard of Château Lerchenborg, but clamored for encores.
Orchestras played at swimming meets and other athletic events, and the more encouragement they had the more could be done in public. They were invited to play at Tivoli on one of its big nights, and here the whole group was emboldened to sing, while a couple of boys gave special vocal numbers. Considering that all performances were given without any particular practice, nothing more than amateur efforts could be expected. Nevertheless, they must have been appreciated even by experts, or some of the boys would not have been obliged to turn down commercial offers from restaurant managers, with the reply that they were guests and not professionals. The Harvardians were kept particularly busy. Four times every night for a week they gave concerts on motion-picture stages in Copenhagen, they gave another concert at the American Consul General's, and one night they had to squeeze in a performance at Tivoli. Imagine the satisfaction at headquarters late that night, when the manager called up and made a request for a return performance. The public had been wild about the music; so, on the following night, "Scotty" Burbank played two trumpets at one time, Mel von Rosenvinge treated his fiddle like a magician, LeRoy Andersen's gigantic sousaphone resounded, Joe Kraetzer played tricks on his traps and drums, and Roy Lamson sent his friendly smile to thousands of just as happily smiling listeners. It was as great as the success which they had had on a vaudeville stage, in Stockholm.
The outstanding performances, however, were given by the Manlius, contingent---preparatory school boys, yet expert musicians forming a band of twenty-five pieces, and there was hardly a piece of music which they were not able to tackle. Their first appearance was at Wivex, the favorite Copenhagen restaurant of society people, in a program of only American composers-Victor Herbert's favorites, Ketelbey In a Monastery Garden, Sousa's Field Artillery Song, etc. The reviewer of the leading conservative paper wrote: "The Manlius boys are experts on their instruments and handle them with remarkable harmony and spirit. Their short introductory concert gave fine promise of what is to be heard from them later." It was a good start for their performance at Tivoli, of which the same paper wrote: "The applause increased and increased, and the boys were not stingy with encores." The management of the garden asked them to extend their half-hour concert to an hour. It was a victory. They took bow upon bow, and finally they were publicly presented with flowers. Captain Botts, their conductor, was overwhelmed as he said: "On the stage in America you can expect to have all kinds of vegetables thrown at you; but this is the first time I have ever had red roses."
Indeed, the Manlius boys could tour Europe with justifiable confidence. In Berlin a show manager heard them at a private party and immediately invited them to be his guests at the evening performance at Berlin's biggest vaudeville house. The announcement was thrown on the screen that they would be glad to play. The manager wrote a couple of days later that it was one of the biggest musical successes the Wintergarten had ever enjoyed. Their triumphal tour continued through Holland, where their concerts delighted Rotary Clubs, students' gatherings, and public audiences; and concluded in Denmark, where the addition of favorite Danish compositions to their repertoire further augmented their popularity. They seemed able to do anything---even to stop an Atlantic liner in mid-ocean. Upon investigation, however, it was discovered that the blame for imitating the foghorn was not to be put upon a craftily manipulated instrument, but upon one of the boys who had made the noise with his mouth, never expecting it to interfere with Atlantic traffic.
If the success of American music abroad had at first appeared doubtful, it would have seemed entirely out of the question to arrange for talks, lectures, and recitations---in the first place because the boys would not like to do it, and in the second place because they might not be able to. The result might have been similar to what happened when one of them in his own school had been asked to give a five-minute talk before his English class on the educational advantages of traveling. He started out: "Traveling, eh, traveling, eh, traveling is a eh-eh-a great, eh, education!" And he never went further. The leader would take a chance on their ability; but were they willing? They were all asked who would like to give a ten or fifteen-minute talk abroad in English, and with a free choice of subjects. Out of one hundred, one answered that he would be delighted to. The rest thought that he was crazy. Imagine the leader's pleasure when, before landing, thirty-eight of the one hundred had voluntarily chosen, outlined, and prepared the following subjects, and seventy-four of a group of three hundred (on. another trip) had picked similar topics: American School Life; Life at Phillips Andover Academy; Life at Peddie School; Preparation for Agriculture; Preparation for Industry; College Life; The Horace Mann School; Life at Phillips Exeter Academy; Scholastic Life; Athletics in School; Student Government; A School Magazine; Social Life in School; The Boy Scouts; The Growth of the American Railroads; Lindbergh and His Transatlantic Airplane; Amateur Radio; Transportation in America; Automobile Camping; How I Got to Denmark; An Automobile Trip Through the West; Life in the Far West; A Boys' Camp; Lincoln's Gettysburg Address; High Spots in American History; Edgar Allan Poe, His Life and Works; Slang Translated into English; The Giant Redwoods of California; The Great Lakes; The Antioch Plan; Niagara Falls; The Philadelphia Region; The Middle West; The City of Boston; The Metropolis of New York City; American Poetry in the 19th and 20th Centuries; The Perfect Tribute---A Story of Abraham Lincoln; Our Government; The American Flag; Early American History.
There were plenty of interested audiences, and the leader just asked them what they would like to hear about from America and he was never stuck by any choice. The most encouraging feature was the way in which the educators of Denmark entered into the arrangements. They invited the boys in small groups of a dozen or so to their schools, treated them to refreshments, released classes so that the, students could mingle with them, and arranged to have them speak before assemblies. Only a person familiar with the formality of school life abroad can appreciate this spirit towards foreign students.
Groups visited nine schools in Scandinavia officially, and individual boys visited others, two or three talks being given in each place. In one talk the remark was made that American boys preferred young teachers, because the old ones knew the game too well. Danish students would have said that age made no difference with them---no teacher would let anybody get by. The boys learned what the Danes meant by that. It did not take them long to find out what school life in Scandinavia was like. In private homes everywhere they met boys and girls who understood English, and besides that German, French, Swedish.. . and in some cases Latin and Greek. They seemed like remarkable linguists, but actually they were not. They were just ordinary preparatory school students who followed the routine of Scandinavian education. In Germany and Holland, educational requirements were found to be equally stiff. Each student had to carry eleven or twelve subjects., among them history, which is not taught as in America, where there is a convenient method of cutting up history into slices, such as Ancient, English, and Modern European history, and allowing the students to choose. Abroad the students had to take them all, and in addition arithmetic, algebra, geometry, the sciences, ancient culture, civics, Bible lessons, and, of course, all phases of the native language, literature, and composition. Although every subject was not taken every day of the week, they all required time and more schooldays, Saturdays included; or to express it in figures, two hundred and forty days, in comparison with around one hundred and eighty in America and, of course, correspondingly short vacations. As one of the boys, said: "It seems to me that here you have a vacation when you don't go to school, while we in America go to school when we don't have a vacation." If they could have been present at the annual tests, they would have been sure that nobody could get by, because every single student had to go up for the final examinations, and they were final, indeed! If they flunked in two or three subjects, it meant the necessity of taking them over with all the other subjects before they could be admitted to the University.
On one occasion the Pedagogical Society of Denmark invited the boys to be its guests. It was a memorable evening when James Rodgers Of Peddie School confronted an audience of dignified headmasters and teachers and introduced the five speakers. First came Milton Burrall of the Loomis School, who spoke on Scholastic Life; then Samuel Groves of Phillips Andover Academy spoke on Social Life; Francis Ayres of the Taft School on Athletics; Oliver Burke of Detroit Country Day School on Student Government; and Pendennis Reed of Carteret Academy on the School Magazine. Everyone spoke about ten minutes, in a boy's language and from a boy's experience. Afterwards several of the headmasters remarked that the boys had poise, used good language, and treated the subjects in a very matter-of-fact way---in short, that they were educated. On their way home these expert educators may have given thought to the respective results of American and Scandinavian education. They had faced and heard the products of the five-subject system; but the next morning they would be seeing that not one item in their own students' twelve subjects was overlooked. None of them would draw any rash conclusions, and think that because one country could manage with a little any other country could do likewise. They realized that local conditions needed special requirements. Many a foreign student, though, would gladly have swapped schools with the Americans.
Another group spoke before the members of the University Club of Copenhagen. Among other subjects, college life was on the program, presented by Charles McIntyre of the University of Michigan. It amazed the Danish undergraduates to hear that liberal arts courses belonged in an American college curriculum, when they themselves covered them in the preparatory school and for five or seven years in the university studied exclusively law, or medicine, or theology, or the subject of any other profession. They were also greatly surprised at the different dialects the speakers used. They all sounded so American, or rather un-English; for the Danes were used to real English from their school studies. The Southern tongue made the greatest hit, and no one could help smiling at the Mississippi drawl.
In Sweden, several speeches were given over the radio. The listeners heard Henry Persons of Nichols School, Buffalo, New York, describe American schools; William Lipp, also of the Nichols School, give his impressions of Sweden; and Allan Ottley of Santa Barbara High School, render an account of the world-wide correspondence of MY FRIEND ABROAD. They gave the Swedes an opportunity to get acquainted with American boys' educational activities and standards.
All the speeches abroad, of course, were given in English, and thousands understood the language. It must be confessed, however, that a speech was given of which not a single native understood one word. That was the account in slang which Delano Boynton of Tower Hill School gave of his trip abroad. The Danes sat and looked perfectly blank, while his one hundred American companions simply roared with laughter. What Dane would understand when Delano related how on the steamer he accidentally had got into the first-class section, describing his adventure in these words: "I was pinched by a whale of a Danish sailor with the words Hellig Olav on his fedora, and he crooned: 'You seem to have skidded out of your district, sonny boy. Scram!' " This was incomprehensible to Danish ears, and so was "the swell guy." They tried to figure out what it could be. "Swell" was probably a word from the ocean, where there is a swell, but "guy" was beyond them. "But they soon picked that up," said the boys, "and before we left they even knew 'the old man,' 'and how!' "
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Considerable information on American educational and cultural life was added by the speeches of the leaders and adult companions. The boys treated their experiences of school life from their point of view as "customers." It was the privilege of adult visitors to give their points of view from the angle of those who were in charge of American education. This was done by Mr. Harold A. Nomer, headmaster of Shady Side Academy, Pittsburgh; and by Mr. Stephen Cabot, former headmaster of St. George's, Newport, Rhode Island, in two talks on American Schools. The climax was reached by Mr. H. V. Kaltenborn. His talk at the Fourth of July Celebration at Rebild Park in Jutland was on a program with the Prime Minister of Denmark, the Consul General of America, and a great number of other distinguished speakers. Although only a couple of thousand in the audience of fifteen thousand understood English, a local paper said that he was the most forceful, most inspired speaker on the program, and a leading city paper called it the most finished speech of the day. So it was a pleasure to introduce him to Copenhagen at a specially arranged meeting. It was a tribute to Mr. Kaltenborn, following a broadcast in the afternoon on Europe and America, that he took the rostrum in a crowded hall in the University Club, faced an audience of leading Copenhagen business, advertising, and newspaper men, and on a hot July night kept them fascinated for an hour with his address on The Press of Today. These talks were samples of what America's cultured speakers can do; and Mr. Kaltenborn, Mr. Nomer, and Mr. Cabot stirred thinking people to a realization of what boys may achieve under excellent cultural leadership.
The newspapers abroad were like the newspapers in America. They wanted news and, judging from piles of clippings, the boys' group activities made good stories. When group doings were no longer news, the reporters would go after inside stories and begin interviewing the boys. It is one thing to tell somebody something, quite another to see that in print, and still another to have somebody put a foreign morning paper before you and say: "Look here, see what you have said." What a relief to have it translated, and to find out that it just said what you felt about your visit, about the people, their homes , the stores, the friendliness---everything you were willing to tell anybody. It gave impressions which may have been commonplace to natives, but were worth while and interesting to foreign boys, and frank and boyish. Here are a few samples:
"You will always get fast service in a store in America. In Denmark the service is both fast and very polite. A customer is greeted with God Dag (How are you?) and led to the door with Farvel og Tak (Good-bye and thank you ,), regardless whether he is a poor person, an American who could be easily cheated, or the Governor himself. This is a comfort to a foreign visitor."---Gordon Stedman, Albany Academy, New York.
"The quaint pipes in the cigar stores attracted my attention. Any boy who first saw the long pipes with curved flexible stems immediately would think how funny it would be to smoke them or bring one home for his Dad. On second thought he would doubt that he could stand even one pipeful and drop the idea of buying it and buy a regular pipe. As far as I could make out, those long pipes were used just for ornaments." ---Donald Bartlett, New Britain, Connecticut, Junior High School.
"Rolling hills and valleys cosily dotted with cottages., millions of bicycles, wonderful meals and pastry, runic boulders, wooden shoes, clean streets, marvellous hospitality, old churches, beautiful scenery, narrow streets, wide boulevards with bicycle paths! All this has left the strongest impression on me in Denmark."---Ralph Rearick, Loomis School, Connecticut.
A reporter interviewed eight individual boys about their observations
in Sweden, and the varieties in their answers were striking. "Crawfish
soup; sports without hardships; lack of ice and snow; politeness; lovely girls;
just like home except for the language; harder studies; much better than
expected!" Other interviewers would ask about life in America and give
their readers a little insight into the boys, customs at home---how they got
jobs at everything imaginable during their long summer vacations and earned
enough money to pay part of their expenses going abroad. They voiced surprise
that labor unions could interfere with anybody's desire to work; and showed
ignorance of companionate marriage, although, as one replied, "I have heard
that an American fellow has been writing a book about it."
Only rarely would the interviewers strike abstract or political subjects. They kept these for the adult leaders and visitors. They would ask Mr. Fremont Loeffel, physical director of Tower Hill School, Wilmington, Delaware, to present the American attitude towards schoolboy athletics; Mr. Joseph Riddle of Winnetka, Illinois, to describe the Americanization work for immigrants at Hull House in Chicago ; Miss Aimee Dawes, the editor of the Christian Science Monitor's children's page, to express America's faith in giving the best reading to its children; Mrs. Mary Wilson, president of the W. C. T. U. of Connecticut, to elaborate upon the influence of women on American life; and Mr. Louis F. Reed of New York, with his law experience, to give the American attitude towards the Sacco and Vanzetti case. And, of course, Mr. Clayton H. Ernst, president of the Open Road Publishing Company and editor of one of America's largest boys' magazines, would be the reporters' constant source of information on all sorts of subjects.
Once in a while the boys would be requested to write their own stories, and quite naturally they appeared in translations. Politiken, the leading liberal morning paper of Copenhagen, carried a whole column by Bronson Collins of Sherrill High School, Oneida, New York, and Fyns Tidende of Odense a whole page of individual stories. One day, however, the readers in Aalborg found parts of their paper printed in a foreign language. Column upon column was in English---captions, copy, and even the heading, which said: "The Aalborg Mail: Your Friends Abroad. No. 1. To appear daily for nine days. Editors: Robert Thomson and Chester Helm." A few Danish words at the top said: "American section for the young U. S. guests of the town." Other Aalborg readers opened their local paper and found a similar section in English, the only difference being that the head said: "American Boys' Correspondence. Editor: Brooks Emory." Everyone soon became familiar with these two special sections, which were in reality two miniature American newspapers originated by two wide-awake, smart Danish editors. They had opened their pages to the boys to get stories, write them up, and edit them.
Expert newspapermen might say that this was a stunt which was all right in a provincial town where the visit of a group of forty American boys was a great event, but that a city paper would never get away with it. Its sophisticated readers would be annoyed and perhaps even cancel their subscriptions. Mr. Gunnar Helweg-Larsen, editor-in-chief of one of the leading conservative dailies of Copenhagen, must have taken a big chance with the prospects of his circulation. One morning his readers found in his Dagens Nyheder, on the most read page, edited by "Mr. Smile," Denmark's most popular sports writer, a miniature American newspaper. For two weeks it appeared in the same spot. The most unexpected result was that the city readers were greatly amused, and so pleased that the editor could state that he was even getting new subscribers on account of The Daily News, the American section. It became very popular, especially with the boys themselves. As one said: "It's an oasis in a language desert!"
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The boy editors and their staffs played freely in columns like Town Topics, The Low Down or Is Zat So? in which no weakness of anybody seemed to be sacred: "Gage and Taylor simply adore the small Danish farmhouses. They remind them of some of their girl friends. You know, painted in the front, shingled in the back, and nothing in the attic." "The Aalborg group has entirely spoiled the beautiful accent of the schoolchildren's English. Not even Palle Vinten. (a Danish boy who gave a talk in excellent English---Editor) can say dance any more." "An American tourist at Hôtel d'Angleterre was heard to say yesterday that the best thing he had seen abroad in a long time was a kid unpacking a baseball bat." "Those quaint American boys rode through Copenhagen yesterday in no less than twelve busses, scaring the policemen and amusing kind old ladies."
There was space in which to run the daily programs, reports on group activities, sports events and news from the outer world. There was even the "Poet's Corner" and "Aunt Cynthia's Letter-Box." It was excellent support to have Jensenius, one of Denmark's outstanding artists, supply clever cartoons as shown in this book. They almost made up for the lack of the "comic strips." Of course, the boy editors had their serious moments, too. They felt very happy in expressing their gratitude towards the public, and most gratified in receiving letters from Danish readers, such as this from a boy: "Dear Editor, many thanks for your delightful Daily News, which is the first of all in Dagens Nyheder which I grab. It is just like hearing from another world." It gave them real journalistic experience to move about daily in the offices of a leading city daily, and in Aalborg to work in the atmosphere of two politically opposed papers., catching the spirit of local competition, and furthermore cooperating with them in a spirit of united happiness of townspeople and guests.
 Are you afflicted with love, what are "or family troubles Write to Cynthia who knows all and tells nothing. Let her help you.
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The success of this stunt was expressed in sincere words by the two editors-in-chief in the last issues: "The publishers of Aalborg Amtstidende want to thank Robert Thomson and Chester Heim for having been kind enough to edit 'The Aalborg Mail' while staying in Aalborg. Although the editorial chair was quite new to both of them, they plunged head first into their work and kept it up with an interest and enthusiasm which promise well for their future. We can assure their people in America that these boys will not feel lost when called upon to face some new work, some unexpected situation, because they both seem to have an alert sense of 'getting down to brass tacks,' as you Americans say. Cooperation with them has been a pleasure. They have done well. Tyge Lassen, Editor."
And these words in the other paper, the "Stiffen-Staffen," as the boys nicknamed it: "Today's issue is the last of the 'American Boys Correspondence,' because you, Mr. Editor (Brooks Emory), and your American comrades leave Aalborg to go elsewhere, making other Scandinavians happy by a short stay. It has been a great pleasure to the Aalborg Stiftstidende to form this connection between you, our young guests, and your different hosts. But especially it has been a pleasure to me to have you as a collaborator in my newspaper and to have learned to know you as a young man who both will and can do what you want to---a man to whom the whole world is open. I shall always keep our collaboration here in Aalborg in happy memory. Yours very truly, L. Schiøttz-Christensen, Editor-in-chief."
Starting for abroad, the boys had never dreamed that they should have the pleasure of breaking into the news, written and edited by themselves in foreign newspapers, and, moreover, of being the first and so far the only boys of any nation ever to enjoy that privilege. Nor had they imagined that newspaper men abroad would be so clever and smart as to put a stunt like that across.
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