It is the most humiliating thing in the world to ask a question in
Dutch and to be answered in English. In Rotterdam I had stopped a
seafaring looking man and tried to ask him in Dutch what was the way to
the Hotel de France. He listened patiently while I struggled with the
language; then he spat on my boot.
"Hotel de France?" he replied in broad Cockney, "damned if I know."
On the way to Amsterdam I got into a carriage full of farmers and one
of them made a remark to me. I shook my head.
"Engelissman?" he said.