Only in travel do we find rest. For our world is a moving platform, and he who would mark time must run—certainly he must run.—Dr. Dives: Abraham the Pedestrian.

The choice of a profession, which naturally began to exercise me when I had gone down, was not at that time at all an easy one. The effect of Indian Home Rule had been, not only to disappoint many who had aspired to the Indian Civic Service, but to send home from India a whole host of Europeans who had lost their positions there and were now in search of employment. The field was consequently narrowed. Canon Dives was very urgent with me to take Holy Orders. “It is just your sort we want,” he was kind enough to say: “people who have stripped Life of its mysteries and looked Truth in the face.” I objected that I felt disqualified on theological grounds: my geographical training had taught me that what is nowhere is nothing, and the idea of a Supreme Being who was ubiquitous affronted my intelligence. Could I, then, honestly take the pay of a Church which taught the existence of a God, when I myself believed in nothing of the sort? He was quite unshaken in his opinion. “After all,” he said, “relativity is in the air, and we are coming to realize, I think, that all truth is relative to the person who believes it. To preach to a congregation of orthodox people and bid them live up to their lights is not necessarily the work of one who is herself an orthodox believer. Besides, you would not get much pay at first. And, as time went on, you might well find that your own ideas would come to frame themselves in a more traditional setting.” I thus very nearly became a deaconess (it was not, of course, till nearly twenty years later that women could attain any higher rank in the ministry). But family opposition (“My dear,” said Miss Linthorpe, “you’d run off with the examining chaplain”) combined with my absence of any definite religious convictions to prevent it. There was some talk of my going into my father’s business, but its prospects were still far from reassuring, and my mother urged, with some common sense, that it would be a mistake to have all our eggs in one basket. And then the authorities at St. Lucy’s solved the difficulty by obtaining for me, as the result of my geographical successes, a travelling scholarship which, on condition of my residing abroad, would make it unnecessary for me to think further about my career for the next two years.

I travelled by train. The aeroplane had not then come to its own, even for long journeys. A series of accidents in the five previous years, not traceable to any one cause, but simply one of those runs of bad luck which mere observation cannot but detect in the nature of things, had made the public nervous and the insurance premiums prohibitive. On the other side, the American Trust which had just taken over the main arteries of Continental Travel—one hardly hears it spoken of now, or only in the same breath with the Darien Canal and the South Sea Company, but to us the Belgium to Bosphorus Trunk Railway was the latest achievement of the human genius—had undoubtedly revolutionized the train journey. The continuous cinema performances, even if you did not patronize them yourself, at least drew off from you the importunate infants that are the bane of the railway carriages (Juliet Savage profanely said that when she went by train she always prayed “Deliver me, O Lord, from the hands of strange children”). Wireless installations and a tape machine made it possible to keep in touch with the news of the world at large. The libraries paid their way, although they were said to reckon on a loss of about £5 by thefts every journey! I believe billiard-players complained of the motion, even the very slight motion which the patent springs had not managed to eliminate, but for myself I always found Badminton made a better game when you had the swing of the train under you to complicate the problem of keeping your feet. With all these amenities, we did not trouble about speed (these trains de luxe only averaged about thirty miles an hour), and the pleasant days passed all too quickly on them. Well, it was another item added to the great list of human follies! And yet it is good discipline for the soul to have seen many such and to have outlived them.

With such leisurely progress I visited, during the latter part of ’38 and almost the whole of ’39, the principal centres of that mid-European republic which we now call Magiria, but which still went, at the time of my visit, by the name of Mittel-Europa. I went from Geneva to Munich, from Munich to Innsbruck, from Innsbruck to Vienna, from Vienna to Bayreuth and Prague, from Prague to Buda-Pest, from Buda-Pest back to Dresden and Leipzig, from Leipzig to Mainz, and so back again to Basle, without crossing a frontier, having my luggage examined, or being asked to produce a passport—I got tired of counting how often I must have submitted to such nuisances if I had done the same journey ten years earlier. I was not a mere sight-seer; I had a purpose in view. Although a travelling scholarship did not entail any conditions as to how you should occupy your time, there was still a feeling that you ought to produce, when it lapsed, a thesis of some sort to justify your intellectual existence. For myself, I determined to write a monograph, which I subsequently published and which gained me honorary admission to the Royal Geographical Society, on the constitution and the general conditions of life which I had observed in the then quite new country of Mittel-Europa. I hope my readers will not accuse me of unnecessary vanity if I print here some few paragraphs from it, which are not, after all, without their interest: it is instructive to read, at this distant date, the estimate which an impartial observer could then form of the prospects of that unique state, which had not then passed, as it has since passed triumphantly, the test of more than fifty years’ untroubled permanence.

“Twenty years ago, when the break up of the ramshackle Empire of Austria-Hungary had brought into being a whole welter of incompetent states, at variance with one another and in themselves, at the very heart of Europe, it would have seemed well-nigh impossible that a single stroke of statesmanship should, in so brief a compass of time, solve all their problems and unite them afresh, this time upon acceptable terms and upon a real, living basis of common interest. Austria itself, shorn of its seaboard and apparently destitute of all hope of self-development; Hungary with its unquiet political agitations; Czecho-Slovakia with its national, its constitutional, its religious dissensions; Bavaria and Saxony, still loosely attached to the German confederation, yet ready upon the slightest pretext to part company with their uncongenial neighbours—it would have seemed impossible, a mere Utopian dream, that all these units should be merged in a single Republic, by the far-seeing genius, not of a politician, not of a religious leader, not of a national hero, but of a Tourists’ Agency—and that agency one which had its centre neither in Vienna nor in Prague nor in Munich, but—tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento—in the busy thoroughfare of Ludgate Circus.

“The old Republic of Switzerland was of course the model, as it consented to become the nucleus, of this vast political experiment. Here were people of three different races—French, German, and Italian—people who not only differed, but had in time past differed even to blood, in their religious outlook, living together in perfect harmony and unparalleled prosperity. The Swiss character is not naturally pacific; on the contrary, in the late Middle Ages the Swiss were the most venal and the most savage mercenaries to be obtained in Europe: yet the little Republic not only kept itself clear, poorly armed as it was, from the turmoil of the Great War,^[1] but laboured, not unsuccessfully, to draw the combatants together and to invite exchanges of opinion. Further, its prosperity seemed in no way diminished by the fact that it had no seaboard and depended upon the good-will of its more powerful neighbours for the whole maintenance of its import and export trade. What could be the secret of this phenomenon on the political horizon, this living disproof of all our most cherished theories as to the conditions which guarantee the unity and the well-being of a nation?

“The answer to this enigma was already known in Ludgate Circus. The Swiss prospered as they did because they were a nation of hotel-keepers. Hotel-keepers, by the very nature of their profession, are bound to keep the peace as far as possible not only with but among their neighbours. They are bound to avoid even the threat or the appearance of strikes and disturbances in their own country, for fear of awaking panic in the hearts of those maiden ladies who are their chief patronesses. Hotel-keepers are not troubled by any petty differences of religion or nationality, so long as they are united in a common endeavour to make money out of the foreigner. Hotel-keepers, finally, do not trouble about a seaboard—any sort of board is good enough for them. It followed that there was only one remedy to apply to the distracted politics of Middle Europe. A larger Switzerland must be formed, which should contain as many as possible of the important tourists’ resorts, and must be organized on the Swiss model, to constitute a solid block of pacific influence, bound together by an indissoluble bond of common commercial interest, which should extend from the South of the Rhineland to the very gates of Galicia.

“It is amazing to see, as one travels about the country, how the lesser difficulties which at first sight seemed likely to attend the scheme solved themselves on the general principles which guided its promoters. Thus, the religious question, which had been acute in several of the old states, gave no further trouble when it was understood that the state would pay for the upkeep of all Church buildings by a pro rata grant, proportional to the number of foreign travellers who had visited each in the course of the last census period. The old political divisions of the whole area were obliterated, and replaced by a new division based on railway facilities; when exception was taken to the use of the word ‘cantons,’ as implying that the Swiss system had overrun its natural boundaries, it was decided that these new geographical units should go by the name of ‘coupons.’ Once it was realized that the whole nation had only a single aim, viz. the exploitation of the foreigner, all democratic institutions speedily disappeared, and the present Senate was set up, consisting of the proprietors of those hotels which are marked with a star in Baedeker’s Guide. Taxes were abolished, and replaced by a five per cent. duty on all commissions and tips. The army was disbanded; for it was rightly argued that there was no danger of friction with foreign nations: if they have grievances to ventilate, they are requested to communicate direct with Ludgate Circus. The language problem was solved by the introduction of American as the official language of the State; the exchange difficulty, which had threatened to strangle the commercial life of Central Europe, was easily met by the self-sacrificing policy of the Agency. The Agency retains very real rights as a power behind the throne, but in no way obtrudes itself on the notice of the people at large; and if the policemen, customs officers, etc., have the distinguishing initials T.C. on their caps, this is only because they create confidence in the mind of the traveller.

“Mittel-Europa has, of course, no diplomatic service; nor does she, except for the Papal Nuncio, admit any foreign representatives. Yet she looms large in the Councils of Europe, and the League of Nations is even now holding—we trust, not unfruitfully—its 218th session at Ober-Ammergau. Her exports are enormous, consisting chiefly of paper-knives, crucifixes, picture-postcards, and unclaimed baggage. Her Parliament meets only once a year, during the months of July, August, and September, not in a single, fixed capital, but in a series of cities taken in rotation—this was, of course, at one time the custom in our own country, when men could speak of the Parliament of Oxford, the Parliament of Gloucester, and so on. The city in which the Parliament is to meet for that year is, of course, for that year the Mecca of all the principal ‘personally conducted tours’ from this country and from the United States, and the proceeds of these tours ordinarily serve to defray the whole expenses of the members. There are no effective political parties, though there is naturally a certain amount of rivalry between the various local interests, debate occasionally becoming acrimonious on the respective salubrity of the various health resorts: in general, however, every one is permitted to say what he will of his own department or ‘coupon,’ provided that he does not explicitly disparage the amenities of any other. Crime is practically unknown there; the majority of the criminal classes have abandoned theft as being less lucrative than the normal occupations of their fellow-countrymen.

“It is greatly to be hoped that in the event of another European War the central position of Mittel-Europa would have a powerful influence in putting a speedy end to the conflict. It would clearly be impossible for the Republic to take sides with either belligerent, since it would immediately strangle all its industries by doing so. Being neutral, it would necessarily interpose a barrier between any two great powers who were trying to fly at one another’s throats. It is true that this ideal has only been imperfectly realized, since the suggestion of including the whole Rhine country, with parts of Alsace-Lorraine, within the boundaries of the new state, was negatived by France, always suspicious of unfriendly motives: an equally intransigent attitude was, most unfortunately, observed by Poland. But even within its lesser confines Mittel-Europa cannot fail to be an influence for good.”

Such was my impression of the situation at the time: and those who remember the incidents of the Great War—how it was Magiria which very nearly prevented the declaration of war in 1972, how Magirian ambassadors were everywhere the natural protectors of the neutral interest, how, finally, it was on Magirian soil, at ZÜrich, that the Peace Conference met in 1975—will not be disposed to quarrel with the accuracy of my estimate. The rest of my paper would not be of much interest to modern readers; but I will add some private reminiscences in the form of extracts from my diary, which will not, I hope, seem out of place: Mittel-Europa was, then as since, a great meeting-ground for the fashionable world of all countries, and it will easily be imagined that, fresh from the almost conventual seclusion of my life at Challow and at Oxford, I missed no opportunity of extending my acquaintance and improving my knowledge of men and manners during my time abroad.

Nuremberg, December 26, 1939. Yesterday, Christmas Day, was solemnly kept by all classes in the town; even the Socialists flying their flag half-mast and in many cases going about in mourning. To church in the morning at St. Sebald’s (I find St. Laurence’s has been given back to the Catholics); we heard a most eloquent lay sermon from one of the Senators, who is a rich hotel-proprietor in the town. He preached on Home-love, of which instinct he said, rather arbitrarily I thought, that the Christus-myth was an objective-becoming. He grew quite eloquent over the lack of accommodation at Bethlehem recorded in the Gospel, and plainly implied that it was the sort of thing which would not be allowed to happen nowadays. He said he was glad to be able to preach about home-love, since he saw so many people in church who were clearly exiled for the moment from their native country; it was, however, he said, the object of the Government to make us all feel as much at home as possible. Immediately after Church went to an enormous Christmas dinner given by the manager of our hotel, to which most of the notabilities of the town and several distinguished foreigners had been invited. The dinner lasted from twelve noon on Christmas Day till two o’clock this morning.

I sat next to one of the new nobility, the Landgrab von Fleissing. He said he was a great reader of English poetry, especially Byron and Mrs. Wilcox: I said neither of them were ever read in England nowadays, and he seemed disappointed; so I asked him whether he read Kipling, which was a fortunate shot: he said “The Beast-mark” was his favourite story. I found he came from Prague, so asked him whether he was a Catholic. He said no, he belonged to the State Church, which broke away from the Catholics in 1920, because they demanded a vernacular liturgy and a married clergy. I asked whether he approved of the married clergy, and he said no, because they did not believe in religion: for himself, he was pious, and thought it was stupid not to believe in God. I explained something of my own doubts, to which he only replied, “Ah, you English, you are so big you get along without him.”

On the other side of me was a Russian, whose name I could not catch: he was very proud of his country, which was, he said, the first revolutionary country, and was still a sort of model of revolution to all others. He was very rich, and kept four motor-cars. When I expressed surprise about this, he explained that communism did not mean an equal sharing of all possessions by all the people, but a free opportunity for men’s natural powers of leadership to come out. (I was told afterwards that his came out in the form of holding up a supply of wheat, for which, my informant added, he would certainly have been lynched in America.) He was very enthusiastic about education, which naturally interested me, and I asked him what sort of curriculum the children went through in the elementary schools. He said they learned not to respect the nobility, not to believe in God, not to love their wives, not to obey their parents, not to join the army, and many, many other things. I said it all sounded rather negative, but he could not understand this word; so I said I did not understand why people needed to be taught such things, but he could not see this.

The room got very hot towards the end of the proceedings. We sang Auld Lang Syne before we separated. We go back to Munich to-morrow.

Vienna, June 24, 1939. I met one of the greatest doctors here at a dance, and he danced so badly that I sat out with him and talked hard to prevent him wanting to go back to the ball-room. He said I ought to go and see the patients at the great Hospital of Rest, where there was a new treatment being tried; you had to sit in a series of draughts, which were carefully graduated so as to get stronger and stronger. It was a wonderful thing, especially for rheumatism. There was another cure which meant that you had to be coated with tar all over. I asked whether they made any charge for admission to see these patients, and he said yes, unless I had got one of the new “Go-everywhere” coupons. I asked whether the psycho-analysts were still strong among the medical faculty, and he said he thought their influence was declining. They had declared that all music was demoralizing, and that had made trouble with the Senators at Bayreuth. They had also wanted to kill all pet dogs.

Bayreuth, August 3, 1939. Almost the first thing we did when we got here was to go to the much-advertised “continuous performance” of the “Ring.” So far as the music was concerned, I simply proved once more the mendacity of the friends who always tell you you don’t have to be musical to appreciate Wagner—not a note of it meant anything to me. And, though the scenery was certainly gorgeous, the whole thing seemed to me over-acted, especially in the amount of facial expression the actors found it necessary to put in. But what enthralled me was the merely mechanical triumph of the whole thing; never for one moment did the cinema-operator get out of time with the gramophone; of course if he had the effect would have lowered the dignity of the whole performance. It was wonderful to watch how the devotees sat there silent, hour after hour; I had one old gentleman pointed out to me who attends every day from nine to one, and again from half-past two to half-past six. It was impossible not to be impressed. With my “Go-everywhere” coupon I was allowed to look behind the scenes, and the gramophone was certainly marvellous. It is said to be the largest in the world, and I could easily have stood up in the mouth of the funnel. There is a story of a cinema-operator who was so worried at having got the pictures one bar out that he went home and shot himself—they are a marvellous people. We also went to the Wagner Mausoleum, where they have continuous lectures on the operas. An old professor, whose name I did not catch, brought forward various reasons, which I did not understand, for believing that Parsifal was written with some special political object, whose nature I cannot remember.

Buda-Pest, September 18, 1939. I was introduced to the great Hungarian novelist, Myslok. He asked me how many of his works I had read; I said none. As he seemed disappointed, I added that I had recently had to spend most of my time reading geography. “Geography!” he said. “What is that? It is only the science of the earth, and what is earth? Only one big piece of dirt”—he pronounced the word with great emphasis and contempt. I was rather nettled, and said I supposed at that rate geography was very much the same as reading modern novels. He asked me which of his characters I liked best: I said I had not read any of his works. He said that was very strange, because they had all been translated into English. I said I always found translations of foreign books dull reading; somehow the thing altered so much in the process. He agreed with me enthusiastically, and said that when his last novel was translated the English publisher had insisted on cutting out the part where the hero (I forget his name now) trampled on the heroine because he did not like her dress. I was feeling rather vague and inattentive, and asked, “Did it kill her?” He said no, but she limped like a crab all the rest of the book. He then asked if I did not think this the finest book he had ever written. I said I had not had the pleasure of reading any of his works. He then asked me to call on him, but he looks so dreadfully like poor Mr. Hoskyns that I really don’t think I can.

Mainz, November 2, 1939. There is a great Congress of Food Reformers going on here, and the hotel-keepers are in despair. Our waiter told us that we were the only people in the hotel who would take the table d’hÔte, and even of the diners À la carte three complained that they were starving owing to a shortage of their favourite diet. Dates, he said, were what they wanted mostly, and all the dates in the town had been sold out long since. “Why they not go hold blinking Congress in the Sahara?” he said, polishing the plates furiously. We went to a lecture on the nutritive qualities of the locust, which I had always hitherto regarded as a sort of pis aller, and I am afraid I came away unconverted. Any number of journalists were present, and we asked the waiter afterwards whether they did not help out the cuisine rather; but he said they took nothing except beer.

These, I am afraid, are only selections from the faded old leaves of my foreign diary, and they are not even representative selections—I seem to have thought a great deal about clothes in those days, and a good deal about young men. I had two proposals, one in Munich and one in Prague, but I managed to get rid of my suitors without invoking the aid of old Miss Linthorpe. It was the news of her dangerous illness that called me back to England before my time was really up. I arrived at home quite unexpected; my father, I remember, greeted me on the door-step with “Hullo, Opal! I’ve been round in 81.”