AMERICANS ABROAD
SIR,—I was much interested to learn, from Mr. Fleming's review of Mr. Edmund Wilson's book, Europe without Baedeker in your issue of December 3rd which reached me here today, that Mr. Wilson disapproves of the British "completely stopping " traffic in one of the most important streets in Athens on Sundays for the purpose of changing the guard outside British Army Headquarters in that city.
Here in Tokyo, at the main street intersection in the business heart of the world's third largest city, eight lines of traffic are "completely stopped " by United States army military police four times daily, 365 days a year, in order to permit General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander for"the Allied Powers in Japan, to pass unhindered in his long black Cadillac limousine—escorted fore and aft by his personal jeep-propelled "Honour Guard "—between the American Embassy, where he lives, and his headquarters in the Dai Ichi Building, across the street from the Imperial Palace.
The same halting of traffic happened in Tokyo before the war, but in those days the police-flanked limousine was maroon-coloured, and its
occupant was Emperor Hirohito.—Yours, HESSELL TILTMAN. Tokyo Correspondents' Club, Tokyo, japan.
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