The advantage that the foreigner possesses over the Englishman is that he
is born good. He does not have to try to be good, as we do. He does not
have to start the New Year with the resolution to be good, and succeed,
bar accidents, in being so till the middle of January. He is just good
all the year round. When a foreigner is told to mount or descend from a
tram on the near side, it does not occur to him that it would be humanly
possible to secure egress from or ingress to that tram from the off side.
In Brussels once I witnessed a daring attempt by a lawless foreigner to
enter a tram from the wrong side. The gate was open: he was standing
close beside it. A line of traffic was in his way: to have got round to
the right side of that tram would have meant missing it. He entered when
the conductor was not looking, and took his seat. The astonishment of
the conductor on finding him there was immense. How did he get there?
The conductor had been watching the proper entrance, and the man had not
passed him. Later, the true explanation suggested itself to the
conductor, but for a while he hesitated to accuse a fellow human being of
such crime.
He appealed to the passenger himself. Was his presence to be accounted
for by miracle or by sin? The passenger confessed. It was more in
sorrow than in anger that the conductor requested him at once to leave.
This tram was going to be kept respectable. The passenger proved
refractory, a halt was called, and the gendarmerie appealed to. After
the manner of policemen, they sprang, as it were, from the ground, and
formed up behind an imposing officer, whom I took to be the sergeant. At
first the sergeant could hardly believe the conductor’s statement. Even
then, had the passenger asserted that he had entered by the proper
entrance, his word would have been taken. Much easier to the foreign
official mind would it have been to believe that the conductor had been
stricken with temporary blindness, than that man born of woman would have
deliberately done anything expressly forbidden by a printed notice.
Myself, in his case, I should have lied and got the trouble over. But he
was a proud man, or had not much sense—one of the two, and so held fast
to the truth. It was pointed out to him that he must descend immediately
and wait for the next tram. Other gendarmes were arriving from every
quarter: resistance in the circumstances seemed hopeless. He said he
would get down. He made to descend this time by the proper gate, but
that was not justice. He had mounted the wrong side, he must alight on
the wrong side. Accordingly, he was put out amongst the traffic, after
which the conductor preached a sermon from the centre of the tram on the
danger of ascents and descents conducted from the wrong quarter.
There is a law throughout Germany—an excellent law it is: I would we had
it in England—that nobody may scatter paper about the street. An English
military friend told me that, one day in Dresden, unacquainted with this
rule, he tore a long letter he had been reading into some fifty fragments
and threw them behind him. A policeman stopped him and explained to him
quite politely the law upon the subject. My military friend agreed that
it was a very good law, thanked the man for his information, and said
that for the future he would bear it in mind. That, as the policeman
pointed out, would make things right enough for the future, but meanwhile
it was necessary to deal with the past—with the fifty or so pieces of
paper lying scattered about the road and pavement.
My military friend, with a pleasant laugh, confessed he did not see what
was to be done. The policeman, more imaginative, saw a way out. It was
that my military friend should set to work and pick up those fifty scraps
of paper. He is an English General on the Retired List, and of imposing
appearance: his manner on occasion is haughty. He did not see himself on
his hands and knees in the chief street of Dresden, in the middle of the
afternoon, picking up paper.
The German policeman himself admitted that the situation was awkward. If
the English General could not accept it there happened to be an
alternative. It was that the English General should accompany the
policeman through the streets, followed by the usual crowd, to the
nearest prison, some three miles off. It being now four o’clock in the
afternoon, they would probably find the judge departed. But the most
comfortable thing possible in prison cells should be allotted to him, and
the policeman had little doubt that the General, having paid his fine of
forty marks, would find himself a free man again in time for lunch the
following day. The general suggested hiring a boy to pick up the paper.
The policeman referred to the wording of the law, and found that this
would not be permitted.
“I thought the matter out,” my friend told me, “imagining all the
possible alternatives, including that of knocking the fellow down and
making a bolt, and came to the conclusion that his first suggestion
would, on the whole, result in the least discomfort. But I had no idea
that picking up small scraps of thin paper off greasy stones was the
business that I found it! It took me nearly ten minutes, and afforded
amusement, I calculate, to over a thousand people. But it is a good law,
mind you: all I wish is that I had known it beforehand.”
On one occasion I accompanied an American lady to a German Opera House.
The taking-off of hats in the German Schausspielhaus is obligatory, and
again I would it were so in England. But the American lady is accustomed
to disregard rules made by mere man. She explained to the doorkeeper
that she was going to wear her hat. He, on his side, explained to her
that she was not: they were both a bit short with one another. I took
the opportunity to turn aside and buy a programme: the fewer people there
are mixed up in an argument, I always think, the better.
My companion explained quite frankly to the doorkeeper that it did not
matter what he said, she was not going to take any notice of him. He did
not look a talkative man at any time, and, maybe, this announcement
further discouraged him. In any case, he made no attempt to answer. All
he did was to stand in the centre of the doorway with a far-away look in
his eyes. The doorway was some four feet wide: he was about three feet
six across, and weighed about twenty stone. As I explained, I was busy
buying a programme, and when I returned my friend had her hat in her
hand, and was digging pins into it: I think she was trying to make
believe it was the heart of the doorkeeper. She did not want to listen
to the opera, she wanted to talk all the time about that doorkeeper, but
the people round us would not even let her do that.
She has spent three winters in Germany since then. Now when she feels
like passing through a door that is standing wide open just in front of
her, and which leads to just the place she wants to get to, and an
official shakes his head at her, and explains that she must not, but must
go up two flights of stairs and along a corridor and down another flight
of stairs, and so get to her place that way, she apologises for her error
and trots off looking ashamed of herself.
Continental Governments have trained their citizens to perfection.
Obedience is the Continent’s first law. The story that is told of a
Spanish king who was nearly drowned because the particular official whose
duty it was to dive in after Spanish kings when they tumbled out of boats
happened to be dead, and his successor had not yet been appointed, I can
quite believe. On the Continental railways if you ride second class with
a first-class ticket you render yourself liable to imprisonment. What
the penalty is for riding first with a second-class ticket I cannot
say—probably death, though a friend of mine came very near on one
occasion to finding out.
All would have gone well with him if he had not been so darned honest.
He is one of those men who pride themselves on being honest. I believe
he takes a positive pleasure in being honest. He had purchased a
second-class ticket for a station up a mountain, but meeting, by chance
on the platform, a lady acquaintance, had gone with her into a
first-class apartment. On arriving at the journey’s end he explained to
the collector what he had done, and, with his purse in his hand, demanded
to know the difference. They took him into a room and locked the door.
They wrote out his confession and read it over to him, and made him sign
it, and then they sent for a policeman.
The policeman cross-examined him for about a quarter of an hour. They
did not believe the story about the lady. Where was the lady? He did
not know. They searched the neighbourhood for her, but could not find
her. He suggested—what turned out to be the truth—that, tired of
loitering about the station, she had gone up the mountain. An Anarchist
outrage had occurred in the neighbouring town some months before. The
policeman suggested searching for bombs. Fortunately, a Cook’s agent,
returning with a party of tourists, arrived upon the scene, and took it
upon himself to explain in delicate language that my friend was a bit of
an ass and could not tell first class from second. It was the red
cushions that had deceived my friend: he thought it was first class, as a
matter of fact it was second class.
Everybody breathed again. The confession was torn up amid universal joy:
and then the fool of a ticket collector wanted to know about the lady—who
must have travelled in a second-class compartment with a first-class
ticket. It looked as if a bad time were in store for her on her return
to the station.
But the admirable representative of Cook was again equal to the occasion.
He explained that my friend was also a bit of a liar. When he said he
had travelled with this lady he was merely boasting. He would like to
have travelled with her, that was all he meant, only his German was
shaky. Joy once more entered upon the scene. My friend’s character
appeared to be re-established. He was not the abandoned wretch for whom
they had taken him—only, apparently, a wandering idiot. Such an one the
German official could respect. At the expense of such an one the German
official even consented to drink beer.
Not only the foreign man, woman and child, but the foreign dog is born
good. In England, if you happen to be the possessor of a dog, much of
your time is taken up dragging him out of fights, quarrelling with the
possessor of the other dog as to which began it, explaining to irate
elderly ladies that he did not kill the cat, that the cat must have died
of heart disease while running across the road, assuring disbelieving
game-keepers that he is not your dog, that you have not the faintest
notion whose dog he is. With the foreign dog, life is a peaceful
proceeding. When the foreign dog sees a row, tears spring to his eyes:
he hastens on and tries to find a policeman. When the foreign dog sees a
cat in a hurry, he stands aside to allow her to pass. They dress the
foreign dog—some of them—in a little coat, with a pocket for his
handkerchief, and put shoes on his feet. They have not given him a
hat—not yet. When they do, he will contrive by some means or another to
raise it politely when he meets a cat he thinks he knows.
One morning, in a Continental city, I came across a disturbance—it might
be more correct to say the disturbance came across me: it swept down upon
me, enveloped me before I knew that I was in it. A fox-terrier it was,
belonging to a very young lady—it was when the disturbance was to a
certain extent over that we discovered he belonged to this young lady.
She arrived towards the end of the disturbance, very much out of breath:
she had been running for a mile, poor girl, and shouting most of the way.
When she looked round and saw all the things that had happened, and had
had other things that she had missed explained to her, she burst into
tears. An English owner of that fox-terrier would have given one look
round and then have jumped upon the nearest tram going anywhere. But, as
I have said, the foreigner is born good. I left her giving her name and
address to seven different people.
But it was about the dog I wished to speak more particularly. He had
commenced innocently enough, trying to catch a sparrow. Nothing delights
a sparrow more than being chased by a dog. A dozen times he thought he
had the sparrow. Then another dog had got in his way. I don’t know what
they call this breed of dog, but abroad it is popular: it has no tail and
looks like a pig—when things are going well with it. This particular
specimen, when I saw him, looked more like part of a doormat. The
fox-terrier had seized it by the scruff of the neck and had rolled it
over into the gutter just in front of a motor cycle. Its owner, a large
lady, had darted out to save it, and had collided with the motor cyclist.
The large lady had been thrown some half a dozen yards against an Italian
boy carrying a tray load of plaster images.
I have seen a good deal of trouble in my life, but never one yet that did
not have an Italian image-vendor somehow or other mixed up in it. Where
these boys hide in times of peace is a mystery. The chance of being
upset brings them out as sunshine brings out flies. The motor cycle had
dashed into a little milk-cart and had spread it out neatly in the middle
of the tram lines. The tram traffic looked like being stopped for a
quarter of an hour; but the idea of every approaching tram driver
appeared to be that if he rang his bell with sufficient vigor this
seeming obstruction would fade away and disappear.
In an English town all this would not have attracted much attention.
Somebody would have explained that a dog was the original cause, and the
whole series of events would have appeared ordinary and natural. Upon
these foreigners the fear descended that the Almighty, for some reason,
was angry with them. A policeman ran to catch the dog.
The delighted dog rushed backwards, barking furiously, and tried to throw
up paving stones with its hind legs. That frightened a nursemaid who was
wheeling a perambulator, and then it was that I entered into the
proceedings. Seated on the edge of the pavement, with a perambulator on
one side of me and a howling baby on the other, I told that dog what I
thought of him.
Forgetful that I was in a foreign land—that he might not understand me—I
told it him in English, I told it him at length, I told it very loud and
clear. He stood a yard in front of me, listening to me with an
expression of ecstatic joy I have never before or since seen equalled on
any face, human or canine. He drank it in as though it had been music
from Paradise.
“Where have I heard that song before?” he seemed to be saying to himself,
“the old familiar language they used to talk to me when I was young?”
He approached nearer to me; there were almost tears in his eyes when I
had finished.
“Say it again!” he seemed to be asking of me. “Oh! say it all over
again, the dear old English oaths and curses that in this God-forsaken
land I never hoped to hear again.”
I learnt from the young lady that he was an English-born fox-terrier.
That explained everything. The foreign dog does not do this sort of
thing. The foreigner is born good: that is why we hate him.