an, 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 Phili