“Lor a bun,” said he. I asked the cows to excuse me for a moment and turned to him. “Lor a bun,” he repeated, this time with a query. I stared uncomprehendingly. The sweet smile became sweeter. “Lor a bun, ma pettit fille, eh?” At last I understood. “Oh, yes, the water is excellent here,”
I replied, “and freezingly cold if you put your fingers in it.” He departed in unceremonious haste.
For some years I have watched the procession of nations on my path. French, German, English, Russian, Austrian, American, Italian—they all brought me a picture of their tribal characteristics, trivial, thumbnail sketches, but nevertheless true to life. It may be urged that holiday-makers do not constitute reliable material for the observation of national peculiarities. I am not so sure. A man on a holiday generally takes his goodwill with him, and endeavours, at least, to restrain his temper and his prejudices. He may fail in the attempt, and be a peevish thing at play, but the attempt will show him at his best. From the hotels below, where the crowds of cosmopolis stayed en pension at reasonable and unreasonable terms, the sound of music and songs visited me in the evening. The nations were waltzing. International peace reigned under the auspices of the Swiss hotel keeper. Forgotten were the ancient feuds of dynasty and religion. Common humanity was uppermost.
And now the nations are at war. The concourse
of friendly strangers who used to meet in the hotels is sharply divided into hostile groups. Travel is suspended or severely restricted. The Frenchman who a short time ago raised his glass in friendly salute to the German at the opposite table, who had guided him across the moraine, is now convulsed at the thought that he could ever forget the essentially brutal and inhuman character of all Germans. The German wishes he had dropped the Frenchman into the crevasse. There would then, he argues, have been one less of these treacherous, mean people, whose love of military conquest is only checked by impotence. He remembers Napoleon and the fact that any insignificant-looking chip of the Latin block may one day threaten the heart of Germany. The easy and good-humoured internationalism of tourist-life is at an end.
I do not know to what extent modern facilities for inexpensive travel have helped to establish friendship and understanding between the nations. But I do know that a person who claims to be educated, and who has never travelled abroad, is insufferably boresome. I prefer the society of a mole. The mole does not lecture me on the incalculable advantages
of remaining in one's dark passages. I do not shut my eyes to the fact that some people go abroad and come home with their stupidity unmodified by experience. But they have been made uncomfortable, and that is something. A series of pricks of discomfort might dislodge the obstacles to mental circulation. A Swiss hotel may serve to check the contempt which the Philistines of all nations (there is a truly international bond between them) feel at the thought of a foreigner, though the shock of finding oneself amongst such peculiarities of clothes, or frisure, or table-manners may be almost unbearable. “Can you tell me,” said a charming but agitated old lady from Bath one day, “of a hotel where there are no foreigners?” “I am afraid I cannot,” I answered. “The hotel you have in mind would be full of foreigners in Switzerland, and you would but add to their number.”
Even the most cosmopolitan habitués of Nice, or Monte Carlo, or Homburg feel the mildly stimulating effect of being in the presence of foreigners. You are interested or disgusted, you are attracted or repelled; your curiosity is aroused; you guess, you weave romances, you make conscious use of the rich material
for comparison which lies before you. In Europe, apparently, the nations meet but do not merge. America achieves the miracle. I remember one evening in New York. I had addressed a meeting of good Americans and was coming home in the train. I was tired and unobservant and kept my eyes closed. Suddenly a loud remark in Danish attracted my attention. I looked up at the row of humanity in the long carriage. Sitting opposite me, standing at my side, hanging by the straps, were the nations of the world. The racial types were there: Slavonic, Latin, Teutonic; the skull dolichocephalic and the skull brachycephalic rested side by side without any attempt at mutual evacuation. I could distinguish the faces of Frenchmen, Jews, Englishmen, Japanese, Germans, Poles, negroes, Italians. They did not study one another. They were journeying home from the day's work. A strange homogeneity brooded over the company. America had put her super-stamp on their brows. They were citizens of an all-human country.
What, then, is this mysterious power which seems to master the Old World, whilst it is mastered by the New World? Nationality is