stines 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 habitues 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 clearly a
mundane thing. It is not generally suggested that heaven is mapped out
into national frontiers; the Christian religion and other faiths are
bent on roping in all the nations. The missionaries who are sent out to
Africa and China go with the conviction that there is room in heaven for
the black and the yellow sinner. True, the black and the yellow man will
first have to shed their somewhat irregular appearance and come forth
white and radiant, but the belief in the possibility of such a feat is