Correspondence
A LETTER FROM BERMUDA. [To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—We, like England, have been enduring a drought through. out the winter which only our visitors, seeking sunshine and open air, have enjoyed without any regrets or apprehensions. And indeed this winter season has been more crowded than ever and it would seem that only our nineteen square miles of area will put a limit to our expansion in hotels and, for an American, the all-necessary golf links adjoining. In speaking of the ever increasing numbers of Americans who visit or winter in Bermuda, one must lament again the exceedingly few English people who visit this British Colony. Boat after boat, full of representative " (as our American friends ex- press it) English people, has touched at Bermuda this winter, but no passengers have come ashore ; they all go on down into the West Indies, a proceeding which puzzles us Ber- mudians who also know the West Indies. I mention this regret, not to give Bermuda a free advertisement, but because our islands afford so good a ground for British and American to meet and appreciate one another's point of view. If ever the E.S.U. build a common central building, it should be situated in Bermuda, which is the Belgium between the New World and the Old.
We, like the Mother Country, have just gone through a General Election ; not that it is a matter of great importance, because our " House " (the oldest Colonial Parliament) has no " Right " and no " Left " and party politics are non- existent. A member is elected for what he is and not what he says he thinks. A fine speaker or a man of much learning has no advantage over a good husband and successful business man. The new House, therefore, is no more Conservative or Radical than the House of fifty years ago. Ours, as Mr. Bot- tomley would describe it, is essentially a Business Government, though it stinted no money recently in the cause of Education, when the Bermuda Rhodes Scholarship was in danger of being compulsorily shared with other Colonies. This danger was successfully averted and local indignation against certain highly placed persons in Whitehall cooled off at once.
In spite of the inconvenience to residents, Bermuda remains motorless, though not quite so motorless as it was. By special legislative acts there are now one motor fire engine, some motor road-watering carts and a few lorries used to facilitate road repairs. A railway, financed in England, to relieve our traffic problem, has been begun, but the " pro- motorites " and local wiseacres say it will never be finished. The arguments which were used against George Stephenson over 100 years ago have come to life again here and flourish astonishingly. England sent us no tennis players this year, and the Americans wiped the board in the men's and mixed events ; but a lonely English lady and some local players kept our end up in the women's events. In golf our Open was won by an American, now better known at Muirfield, and our Amateur (won a few years ago by the winner-to-be that year of the British Amateur) was wrested from our persis- tent opponents by a Cambridge golf blue of a few years ago. Perhaps next winter the professionals and amateurs to defend England at golf in America will meet here their future oppon- ents in less serious battles by way of preparation. The Ameri- cans, too, won the one-design yacht races, and alas for the first time, also claimed the winning " skipper " in indi- vidual scores. Year by year as they become longer established, these international rivalries are more keenly fought out and more joyously commented upon in the junkettings which follow and, as Bermudians, we increasingly regret that we do not have more English relations to introduce to our American friends.
And one other word on a subject which should loom large on the British horizon. Since Lindbergh, Bermuda has been flooded with American aircraft company promoters. One has told us how we are the proper fuelling station for trans- atlantic flight and how an aeroplane need never lose sight of " land " between Bermuda and America if a beacon light were put on one of our hills and a second on the Delaware Breakwater. Another wants to keep a wireless equipped ship in the Gulf Stream half-way between us and New York and run a seven-hour journey ferry. So far, the local Legislature has been content to wait on the Colonial Office and Imperial Airways, but the more impatient are not lacking and grow in numbers with each new air " record."—I am, Sir, &c.,
YOUR BERMUDA CORRESPONDENT.
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