For the same reason every Englishman keeps a fence round his garden—be it castle or cottage garden—just to show that it is his garden and no one else’s. And if you look into any old English parish church you will see the same thing. Every family has its own pew; the humblest pew has a door, and when the family gets inside the pew it shuts the door. Some of the pews have curtains around them as well. The occupant can see the minister, and the minister can see him. The rest of the congregation are as invisible to him as he is to them. No one in the congregation resents this at all. They are rather proud of the custom. It represents to them only what is right and proper, the principle of a compartment to one’s self.
And so a nation which has lived for centuries upon this plan is not a nation which enters readily or easily into conversation outside its own particular compartment. But how was I to explain or excuse such a state of mind to my American soldier friend? Let me say right here that this constrained behaviour does not arise from churlishness, or want of good-will. Even the Germans admit that. A German philosopher once said, with considerable truth for a German: “The Englishman is a cold friend, but a good neighbour. He may shut himself up with his property, but he will never dream of invading yours.” This statement is only partially correct. The Englishman is one of the warmest-hearted and most hospitable of men. But he is a bad starter—a bad starter in War, Love, Business, and, above all, Conversation. Once get him started, and he refuses to leave off. But you must start him first. And you are doing it.
The Englishman’s passion for his own compartment goes back a very, very long way, right into the centuries. It goes back to the days when we lived in tribes and every tribe kept to itself, and an Englishman’s house was his castle—especially if the house were a one-room mud hut. That makes us what we are to this day. Also we are cooped up in a small island, and most of us have never left it. No Englishman ever speaks to another Englishman if he can help it. This is partly the old tribal instinct, partly laziness, and partly fear of a rebuff. Also, it may involve explanations, and an Englishman would rather be scalped than explain. So he saves trouble all round by burying himself in a newspaper and saying nothing.
That by the way. But the main object of this little book is to make you welcome to England, whoever you may be, and to show you why it is that in our inarticulate and undemonstrative English way, we love our small country just as you love your big continent.
“This fortress built by Nature by herself
Against infection and the hand of war;
This happy breed of men, this little world;
This precious stone set in a silver sea;
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.”
That is how William Shakespeare felt about this “right little tight little island” three hundred years ago, in days when our nation was fighting for its life, neither for the first nor for the last time, against overwhelmingly superior forces. And we hope that when you go back safe and victorious, as we pray God you may, to your own beautiful land, you will carry with you a little of that same feeling, and a real understanding of the passionate sentiment that lies beneath it.