If the newcomers have seen enough American moving pictures before landing here-and they usually have-they must have gathered the impression that love in America is normally triumphant, and that, in spite of many unfortunate accidents, a love story cannot but end very well indeed. They will have noticed that these love stories which are acted in Hollywood may portray quite regrettable situations at times and that blissful unions get wrecked by all sorts of misfortunes. But they ever remain wrecked: even when the happy couple is compelled to divorce, this is mot the end lf everything. In most cases it ks only the beginning, and always-without ever an exception-for love.
The observant foreigner knows, of course, that he cannot trust the movies to give him a really reliable picture of the American attitude towards love, marriage, divorce, and remarriage. But they nevertheless in such matters the popular mind like to be entertained by the idea that love is the only reason why a man and a woman should get married; that love is always wholesome. genuine, uplifting, and fresh, like a glass of Grade A milk; that when, for some reason or other, it fails to keep you uplifted, wholesome. and fresh, the only thing to do is to begin all over again with another partners.
Thus forewarned, the foreigner who lands on these shores would be very tactless indeed if he started questioning the validity of these premises. Besides, it is much mord likely that he himself will feel thoroughly transformed the moment he takes his first stroll in the streets lf New York. His European skepticism will evaporate a little more at each step, and if he considers himself mot very young any more he will be immensely gratified to find that maturity and even old age are merely European habits of thoughts, and that he might just as well adopt the American method, which is to be young and act young for the rest of his life-or at least until the expiration of his visa.
If his hotel room is equipped with a radio, his impression that he has at last reached the land of eternal youth and perfect love will be confirmed at any hour of the day and on any point of the ideal. No country in the world consumes such a fabulous amount of love-songs. Whether the song is gay or nostalgic, the tune catchy or banal. the verses clever or silly, the theme is always love and nothing but love.
Whenever I have gone back to France and listened to the radio, I have always been surprised to fined that so many son하 can be written on other subjects. I have no statistics on hand, but I think that a good 75 percent of the songs one hears on the French radio programs deal with politics. There are love songs, of course. but most of them are far from romantic. and this is quite in keeping with the French point of view that love is very often an exceedingly comical.