The Blower of Bubbles

ARTHUR BEVERLEY BAXTER
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY NEW YORK 1920
Copyright, 1920, by D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
MY MOTHER
PREFACE
It was one of Dumas' characters, I believe, who said: I do not apologize—I explain. The purpose of this brief preface is to explain the many imperfections which of necessity appear in this volume.
It was at a dance after Armistice, given by American officers in the Palace Hotel, London, that I met a young lady who had landed from New York two days previously.
My goodness! she said, they don't have any furnaces in their houses here; and I've been trying all day to buy some rubbers, and no one knew what I meant. My goodness! but they're backward over here.
I looked at her face and recognized the joyful mania of the explorer. She was discovering England.
Before the war, England was discovered fairly often—but during the war it became the passion of hundreds of thousands, Americans, Australians, New Zealanders, Canadians, Newfoundlanders, South Africans—we all brought our particular national viewpoint and centered it on the tight little Island, nor were we backward about telling the English of their faults. Each one of us stated (or implied) that his own country was the special acreage of God, and that the Kaiser ought to be made to live in foggy London as a punishment.
And for more than four years the Old Country listened patiently as the throngs of adventurers poured in from the world's outskirts. The stately homes of England were opened in their stately, hospitable way; English taxicab drivers insulted and robbed us just as cheerfully as they did their own countrymen; English girls proved the best of comrades; and the Englishman proper continued to be the world's greatest enigma.