CHAPTER XVIII
MONTAIGNE
In the Middle Ages it used to be said that city air made for freedom.
That was true.
A man behind a high stone wall could thumb his nose safely at baron and priest.
A little later, when conditions upon the European continent had improved so much that international commerce was once more becoming a possibility, another historical phenomenon began to make itself manifest.
Done into words of three syllables it read: “Business makes for tolerance.”
You can verify this statement any day of the week and most of all on Sunday in any part of our country.
Winesberg, Ohio, can afford to support the Ku Klux Klan, but New York cannot. If the people of New York should ever start a movement for the exclusion of all Jews and all Catholics and all foreigners in general, there would be such a panic in Wall Street and such an upheaval in the labor movement that the town would be ruined beyond the hope of repair.
The same held true during the latter half of the Middle Ages. Moscow, the seat of a small grand ducal count, might rage against the pagans, but Novgorod, the international trading post, must be careful lest she offend the Swedes and Norwegians and the Germans and the Flemish merchants who visited her market place and drive them to Wisby.