MOST THOROUGHLY ENGLISH.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 188, 11 August 1933, Page 6

MOST THOROUGHLY ENGLISH.

An intelligent young German, who was one of the first to study in France after the war, and who came on to England, expounded to me some years ago what he felt to be the striking unlikeness between France and the French and England and the English (writes Mr. Wickham Steed in the "Christian Science Monitor"). In I France he had been received with much kindness. French professors had gone out of their way to make everything clear to him. They seemed eager that he should understand, and were particularly careful to dispel any mistaken notion he might have got into his head. He found that what they said about France corresponded to his own observations; and that their words were almost always in logical harmony with their doings. In England, he was bewildered. Everybody was polite to him, but nobody explained anything to him. He was hospitably entertained, and left to find things out for himself. If he asked the why and wherefore of what struck him as curious, the explanations were timid, halting and. to his mind, inadequate. People seemed not really to oare very rmich whether he understood or not. When I had complimented him upon the accuracy of his impressions he added, "But the strangest difference between the French and the English is that the French, after all, are a trifle provincial. They inhabit a province oj Europe, and think in terms of their province. The English seem to inhabit the world."

A few rears back a certain college in one of our older universities set itself to celebrate the sixth centenary of its foundation. It bears the name of a saintly lady whose conspicuous virtues were rewarded, ages ago, by canonisation. On the day the celebrations began Queen Alexandra died. The guests, the heads of the college and the, students assembled in the college chapel. The Master, who held the rank of bishop, made feeling and dutiful reference to the national bereavement and extolled the many high qualities of the Royal lady who had passed on. Next, the 149 th Psalm was reverently sung, particularly the eighth verse: "To bind their kings with chains, and their nobles with fetters of iron." A sermon followed, in which the achievements of the college were enumerated, including a recent success in boxing. Then was sung the livnm, "The God of Abraham Praise," and the company went to lunch. At Innch the Master of the college said ho hoped I had enjoyed the celebration, "immensely." I answered. "It is the most thoroughly English affair I have ever attended" —and I impishly related the series of unconscious incongruities which' had .just taken place .in the chapel. The Master mused awhile, and then asked: "Do you know why we sang that hymn, 'The God of Abraham Praise'? v We have thirteen Jews in the college. They wished to come to the chapel, but felt they would bo happier if they could have some part in the service. So they chose the hymn." This was the most thoroughly English part of the whole performance. A coliege founded in honour of a Roman Catholic saint, with an Anglican bishop as its master, deliberately put into its celebration service something to nlease the college Jews. I thought that good-humoured, broad-minded tactfulnrss could hardly have gone further. There was no trace of cynicism in it. To me it: was at once a lesson in the. art of life and in the art of government.