CANADA: You're Welcome

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Two bright-witted, toothy British youngsters last week raised merry hell with British-Canadian relations. In the first frantic days of the war Caroline and Eddie Bell were shipped off to Canada by their Oxford don father who admonished them that "you can't lay the flattery and gratitude on too thick—they love it." After a year in Canada and the U. S. the children couldn't stand it any longer, authored a book entitled Thank You Twice (Harcourt, Brace; $1). This time they heeded the admonition of their publisher to "pull no punches," said precisely what they thought.

As delightful as it is tactless, the book sent many Canadians into gales of laughter, enraged others, who yanked copies from Toronto bookstore windows. The Toronto Star, refusing to review the book, commented: "Do you think our newspaper is printed on asbestos?" The Star's sports columnist suggested: "We could boil them in oil over a slow fire."

What got under skins was the little guests' account of life in Canada. They were told "stupid, soothing things" while going through Customs, then given "a childish lunch of sloppy things like jelly and rice pudding." Toronto's big Union Station with its "slippery marble floor" looked at first to them like a church, later, they decided, more like a lavatory.

Sensitive, quietly reserved, they hated being fondled. "Many of the ladies kissed us good night," reported Caroline, 12, and Eddie, 9. "They meant it kindly, but it is not very nice being kissed by people you don't know. Especially ladies who get on committees." Eddie was baffled by Toronto mores. Delighted with his first experience in a shower bath, he invited a little English refugee girl to share it with him. A refugee committee woman found them splashing happily together, howled in dismay: "You dirty little wretches! Little boys and girls don't do that sort of thing in this country. It's—it's not nice at all!"

Bewildered in Canada, the children were "rescued" by a U.S. "millionaire" who took them to Connecticut, but whose conversation was largely confined to the use of the phrase "That's swell." Not so language-conscious as a refugee friend, whose father told her he would rather have her torpedoed at sea than "acquire an American accent," Caroline and Eddie were nevertheless amazed by the description of an American automobile accident as "a bloody mess," and thoroughly shocked at the American expression "all balled up."

In Connecticut they found a big black woman who was "something called Baptist," tried chewing raw tobacco leaf, discovered they were being "kidded" when other youngsters in school asked them if they wanted Germany to win the war. School patriotism threw them into a flat spin. They thought at first the mumbled words of the salute to the flag meant "Routine and Justice to all."

In New York City the Automats were "very amusing," the subways "dirty" and "disappointing." Central Park was "a plant growing on a shiny tin table."