than that. It is not intended to be a
reflection on the peerage. It is an unconscious reflection on the British
public. The idea behind the announcement is not that we shall go to see the
play in a spirit of curiosity, as if it had been written by an
ourang-outang, but that we shall go to see it in a spirit of flunkeyism, as
if it had been written by a demi-god. We are conceived sitting in hushed
wonder that a visitor from realms far above our experience should stoop
down to amuse us.

I wish I could feel that this was a false estimate of the British public.
It would certainly be a false estimate of the French public. The most
splendid thing, I think, in connection with the French people is their
freedom from flunkeyism. The great wind of the Revolution blew that rubbish
out of their souls for ever. It gave them the sublime conception of
citizenship as the basis of human relationship. It destroyed all the social
fences that feudalism had erected to keep the people out of the common
inheritance of the possibilities of human life. It liberated them from
shams, and made them the one realistic people in Europe. They looked truth
in the face, because they had cleaned its face of the dirty accretions of
the past. They saw, and they are the only people in Europe who as a nation
have seen, that

The rank is but the guinea stamp:
The man's the gowd, for a' that.

It is this fact which has made France the standard-bearer of human ideals.
It is this fact which puts her spiritually at the head of all the nations.

I am afraid it must be admitted that we are still in the flunkey stage. We
are still hypnotised by rank and social caste. I saw a crowd running
excitedly after a carriage near the Gaiety Theatre the other day, and found
it was because Princess So-and-So was passing. Our Press reeks with the
disease, and loves to record this sort of thing:--

THE DUKE OF CONNAUGHT IN NEW YORK.

While strolling down Fifth Avenue the
Duke of Connaught accidentally collided
with a messenger boy carrying a parcel,
whereupon he turned round and begged the
boy's pardon.

You see the idea behind such banalities. It is that we are stricken with
respectful admiration that people with titles should act like ordinary
decent human beings. It is an insult to them, and it ought to be an insult
to the intelligence of the reader. But the newspaper man knows his public
as well as the cinema producer. He knows we have