fact the two lists look to me terribly like "the mind of Costa
Rica."

The same editor also advised me to mingle, at his expense, in the
brilliant intellectual life of England. "There," he said, "is a coterie
of men, probably the most brilliant group East of the Mississippi." (I
think he said the Mississippi). "You will find them," he said to me,
"brilliant, witty, filled with repartee." He suggested that I
should send him back, as far as words could express it, some of this
brilliance. I was very glad to be able to do this, although I fear
that the results were not at all what he had anticipated. Still, I held
conversations with these people and I gave him, in all truthfulness, the
result. Sir James Barrie said, "This is really very exceptional weather
for this time of year." Cyril Maude said, "And so a Martini cocktail
is merely gin and vermouth." Ian Hay said, "You'll find the underground
ever so handy once you understand it."

I have a lot more of these repartees that I could insert here if it was
necessary. But somehow I feel that it is not.

IV. A Clear View of the Government and Politics of England

A LOYAL British subject like myself in dealing with the government of
England should necessarily begin with a discussion of the monarchy. I
have never had the pleasure of meeting the King,--except once on the
G.T.R. platform in Orillia, Ontario, when he was the Duke of York and
I was one of the welcoming delegates of the town council. No doubt he
would recall it in a minute.

But in England the King is surrounded by formality and circumstance. On
many mornings I waited round the gates of Buckingham Palace but I found
it quite impossible to meet the King in the quiet sociable way in which
one met him in Orillia. The English, it seems, love to make the kingship
a subject of great pomp and official etiquette. In Canada it is quite
different. Perhaps we understand kings and princes better than the
English do. At any rate we treat them in a far more human heart-to-heart
fashion than is the English custom, and they respond to it at once. I
remember when King George--he was, as I say, Duke of York then--came up
to Orillia, Ontario, how we all met him in a delegation on the platform.
Bob Curran--Bob was Mayor of the town that year--went up to him and
shook hands with him and invited him to come right on up to the Orillia
House where he had a room reserved for him. Charlie Janes and Mel
Tudhope and the other boys w