hill just behind us, and was in charge of a
party of men who were working on British Field Artillery positions. His
men were on British rations and did not altogether like them. They would
have preferred more bread and less meat and jam, and they missed their
coffee. Our tea they did not fancy. The first time it was issued to
them, they thought it was medicine. "Why do the English give us
_'camomila'_?" they asked their officer, "we are not ill!"

* * * * *

I have had, at one time and another, much gay and delightful intercourse
both with Frenchmen and Italians, which has led me to certain
speculative comparisons and to many dangerous generalisations, some of
which I will venture tentatively to set down here. But it is difficult
to find forms of words which are not mere journalism.

Italian humour is more primitive and uproarious than French, and the
Italians seem to present fewer barriers to intimacy, but the proportion
of rational discussion is larger in the conversation of the French. Both
the French and the Italians combine natural and easy good manners with
great punctiliousness in small matters of etiquette. Only very arrogant
or very boorish people find it difficult to get on well with either.

It is idle for any wideawake observer to deny that a certain antipathy
exists between the French and the Italians. Both, I think, generally
prefer the British to their Latin brothers, and I have heard both say
unjust and absurdly untrue things about the other. Their antipathy is
rooted partly in temperament, partly in history, and partly in that
ignorance and lack of understanding which accounts for nine-tenths of
all international antipathies. As Charles Lamb said, in an anecdote
which President Wilson is fond of quoting, "I cannot hate a man I know."
It is sometimes said that the French and the Italians are too much alike
to be in perfect sympathy. The Frenchman has at times an instinct to be
what an Englishman would call "theatrical," which instinct the
Englishman himself hardly possesses at all. But in the Italian this
instinct is even stronger than in the Frenchman, and he gives it freer
play. Thus the Frenchman often notices the Italian doing and saying
things which he himself dislikes, but which it needs a deliberate effort
of self-repression on his part not to imitate. The Englishman has no
inclination to do and say such things, and is, therefore, more tolerant
of them than the Fr