"Americans Too Much Disturbed Over Younger Generation", Asserts Nordal in Interview--Iceland Has Prohibition Laws

"The older generation has always been busily engaged in telling the younger that it is leading the country to the dogs, and the younger has been as eagerly paying no attention to its elders", said Sigurthur Nordal, Charles Eliot Norton Professor of Poetry, in a recent interview. "That is not by any means a novel remark as anyone will agree", he continued, "but I have noticed that Americans are even more disturbed about the idea of future degeneration than they ought to be. America, from a European stand-point is decidedly not reverting to the primeval state; perhaps some wish that it was.

"You may say", he went on, "that your prohibition laws are evil, and yet they seem to stay right with you through all the smoke and pseudo-virulent flame of attack. We have something in common with you with our laws about liquor; Iceland and the United States are the only two countries in the world that have prohibition, and the majority of our people are opposed to it, just as yours are. Despite the apparent helplessness of America and the foolishness of self-imposition of thousands of useless and liberty-destroying laws, I do not at all feel that it is a decadent country. New York City is almost symbolical of growth, and the Empire State building its personification,--not only a material personification, but a spiritual one as well.

"I could well compare Boston and its vicinity with many European cities; that is to say that Boston is much different from New York. America is still on the upswing, while Europe is to a great extent standing still."