After one of my public addresses I received the following anonymous letter.

— Dear Dr. A. Amber. In your public appearances you always stress that former Displaced Persons must do in this country work which is not in accordance with their qualifications, so that important people are reduced here to labourers.

This gives me an opportunity to draw your attention to an optical law which everyone who has travelled from place to place is aware of. Namely every thing, every object looks smaller and smaller the further we move away from it. Yet this law is valid in the local travel only. The reverse phenomenon we observe in regard to people who travel for great distances away from their homeland, especially for immigration purposes. Everything which is left behind in their country grows in their eyes in accordance with the distance which separates them.

For that reason we see that no genuine migrant had a small farm or a garret flat somewhere in the poorest suburb of some small town of his homeland; he always pretends to have owned a big country estate or a sky-scrapper in the capital city. Likewise, no migrant has ever left behind in his country, as his only worldly possessions, a table with one leg broken, a couple of old stools and a bed hardly standing in one piece, but he always talks of the redwood furniture, piano and other similar possessions.

This law of reverse perspective, applies also to the former jobs of migrants in their native countries. None of them, as we see, was a small fish in his country, everyone was a great industrialist, a director, a minister, a banker or something like that.

There is no wonder, therefore, that many of those, who used to be simple labourers in their countries, complain that here they must do manual work which does not befit their professional status.

And what is the most astonishing, the same distorted law of perspective seems to be valid even in respect of animals.

To prove that I can tell a little story which was in circulation some years ago.

An Australian lady was walking in a park with her big dog and she came across a New Australian lady exercising her pocket-sized dog. Being a true daughter of her country, the Australian lady made a couple of remarks about the weather from which a conversation ensued. The ladies sat on a bench and the Australian lady asked how the other lady liked Australia.

"I don't like it at all," answered the New Australian lady.

"Why?" asked the astonished Australian lady.

"Quite simple, why!" answered the New Australian lady. "In my country I had a villa and a maidservant, but here I live in a small flat and must do myself all the housework. I must even exercise myself my dog."

While the ladies had a chat, the dogs started a conversation as well.

"How do you like Australia?" said the big dog to the little one.

"I don't like here at all!" answered the little dog.

"You don't like here at all!" exclaimed the big dog. "Why on earth don't you?"

"It is quite clear why," answered the little dog. "In my country I was much bigger than an Alsatian, hut see what happened to me here! I am reduced to the size of a pocket dog!"

David Marquis

Copyrighted material; do not reprint without permission.

 

View all articles by David Marquis