"Oh! They don't," said the Englishwoman, getting rather worn. "There are very few, really. It's the custom."
"Ah!" said the German, with a long deep breath of satisfaction. "So are you English ... such slaves to custom. Gott sei Dank that I do not live in a country where I should have to keep a girl in idleness for the sake of the door. With us a door is a door. Anyone who happens to be near opens it."
"I know they do," said the Englishwoman, "and when a servant comes she expects you to say Guten Tag before you ask whether her mistress is at home?"
"Certainly. It is a politeness. We are a polite nation."
"And once, when I had just come back from Germany, I said Good-morning to an English butler before I asked if his mistress was at home, and he thought I was mad. We each have our own conventions. That's the truth of the matter."
"Not at all," said the German. "The truth of the matter is, that the English are extremely conventional, and follow each other as sheep do; but the German does what pleases him, without asking first whether his neighbour does likewise."
This is what the German really believes, and you agree or disagree with him according to the phase of life you look at when he is speaking. You find that when he comes to England he honestly feels checked at every turn by our unwritten laws, while when you go to Germany you wonder how he can submit so patiently to the pettiness and multiplicity of his written ones. He vaguely feels the pressure and criticism of your indefinite code of manners; you think his elaborate system of titles, introductions, and celebrations rather childish and extremely troublesome. If you have what the English call manners you will take the greatest care not to let him find this out, and in course of time, however much you like him on the whole, you will lose your patience a little with the individual you are bound to meet, the individual who has England on his nerves, and exhausts his energy and eloquence in informing you of your country's shortcomings. They are legion, and indeed leave no room for the smallest virtue, so that in the end you can only wonder solemnly why such a nation ever came to be a nation at all.
"That is easily answered," says your Anglophobe. "England has arrived where she is by seizing everything she can lay hands on. Now it is going to be our turn."
You express your interest in the future of Germany as seen by your friend, and he shows you a map of Europe which he has himself marked with red ink all round the empire as it will be a few years hence. There is not much Europe outside the red line.
"But you haven't taken Great Britain," you say, rather hurt at being left out in this way.