from San
Francisco to London for less than it costs to send a similar letter
from one London suburb to another. In America you have inter-state
telephone service, you have the constant extension of an elaborate and
efficient system, whilst on our side of the water we intelligent
Europeans are asking to have the apparatus removed as a hindrance and a
failure.

Passports, railway-service, post, telephone, currency--all these may
fittingly be considered as aspects of one vital matter, namely,
circulation. All living organic unity is dependent on circulation. As
the health of the human body is dependent on an unobstructed
circulation of the blood, of the lymph, of the air, so the health of a
nation or a state or a group of states is dependent on the free
circulation of peoples, goods, opinions, money, and what not. A bad
circulation results in "pins and needles," and we Europeans have so
inverted common sense as to indulge habitually in a policy of
pin-pricks. A bad circulation results in cold feet, in local
stagnation, in lethargy. No circulation results in death. It means

to die, and go we know not where,
To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot.

It may almost be said that Shakespeare's formula for death describes
Europe--she goes she knows not where, she lies in cold obstruction and
she rots.

In reality it is not quite so bad as that. Though there is local
paralysis of an alarming kind, there is also a sluggish circulation.
How impeded that circulation is let the traveller judge.

In January, 1921, I took a general passport for Europe. The British
passport office facilitated my struggles. For I am a well-known
struggler there and am now excused the preliminary heats. I spent a
week getting visas in London. I remembered his Excellency of Greece
had changed his address. When the taxi-driver had located his new
office in Great Tower Street we found that he was having a holiday,
celebrating New Year's Day in orthodox Greek style about the fourteenth
of the month. I returned in a few days' time and his Excellency was
celebrating Epiphany. Next time I resolved to take a precautionary
twenty minutes at the telephone and find out whether there were any
other festivals on. The Poles, I remember, asked for answers to
questions on two sheets of foolscap and charged thirty shillings for a
visa that went out of date before I could get to their country. His
Excellency of Bulgaria I made several trips to