o 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.

"We don't want it ... otherwise, ... but India ... possibly
Australia." He waves his hands.

You look at him pensively, and suddenly see one of the great everyday
distances between your countryfolk and his. You think of a French
novel that