the long trip back.

In the English port at which his ship touched, he was mistaken for a
disloyal newspaper man for whom the British Secret Service had long been
seeking. He was arrested, searched and submitted to a very disquieting
third degree. When they asked him in violent explosive tones what he
went into Germany for, he replied in his mild, unexcited Western voice -
to give his brother-in-law some money. All Europe is accustomed to crazy
Americans of course, but this strained credulity to the breaking point;
for nobody who has not tried to travel in the war countries can realize
the sheer unbelievability of such guilelessness. The British laughed
loud and long. His papers were taken away and sent to London but in a
few days everything was returned. A mistake had been made, the
authorities admitted, and proper apologies were tendered. But they
released him with looks and gestures in which an abashed bewilderment
struggled with a growing irritation.

That is a typical Native Son story.

If you are an Easterner and meet the Native Son first in New York (and
the only criticism to be brought against him is that he sometimes
chooses - think of that - chooses to live outside his native State!) you
wonder at the clear-eyed composure, the calm-visioned unexcitability
with which he views the metropolis. There is a story of a San Francisco
newspaper man who landed for the first time in New York early in the
morning. Before night he had explored the city, written a scathing
philippic on it and sold it to a leading newspaper. New York had not
daunted him. It had only annoyed him. He was quite impervious to its
hydra-headed appeal. But you don't get the answer to that imperviousness
until you visit the California which has produced the Native Son. Then