“In religion?” said Yeovil.

“In religion, yes,” said his companion emphatically; “they had come to look on the Christ as a sort of amiable elder Brother, whose letters from abroad were worth reading.  Then, when they had emptied all the divine mystery and wonder out of their faith naturally they grew tired of it, oh, but dreadfully tired of it.  I know many English of the country parts, and always they tell me they go to church once in each week to set the good example to the servants.  They were tired of their faith, but they were not virile enough to become real Pagans; their dancing fauns were good young men who tripped Morris dances and ate health foods and believed in a sort of Socialism which made for the greatest dulness of the greatest number.  You will find plenty of them still if you go into what remains of social London.”

Yeovil gave a grunt of acquiescence.

“They grew soft in their political ideas,” continued the unsparing critic; “for the old insular belief that all foreigners were devils and rogues they substituted another belief, equally grounded on insular lack of knowledge, that most foreigners were amiable, good fellows, who only needed to be talked to and patted on the back to become your friends and benefactors.  They began to believe that a foreign Minister would relinquish long-cherished schemes of national policy and hostile expansion if he came over on a holiday and was asked down to country houses and shown the tennis court and the rock-garden and the younger children.  Listen.  I once heard it solemnly stated at an after-dinner debate in some literary club that a certain very prominent German statesman had a daughter at school in England, and that future friendly relations between the two countries were improved in prospect, if not assured, by that circumstance.  You think I am laughing; I am recording a fact, and the men present were politicians and statesmen as well as literary dilettanti.  It was an insular lack of insight that worked the mischief, or some of the mischief.  We, in Hungary, we live too much cheek by jowl with our racial neighbours to have many illusions about them.  Austrians, Roumanians, Serbs, Italians, Czechs, we know what they think of us, and we know what to think of them, we know what we want in the world, and we know what they want; that knowledge does not send us flying at each other’s throats, but it does keep us from growing soft.  Ah, the British lion was in a hurry to inaugurate the Millennium and to lie down gracefully with the lamb.  He made two mistakes, only two, but they were very bad ones; the Millennium hadn’t arrived, and it was not a lamb that he was lying down with.”

“You do not like the English, I gather,” said Yeovil, as the Hungarian went off into a short burst of satirical laughter.

“I have always liked them,” he answered, “but now I am angry with them for being soft.  Here is my station,” he added, as the train slowed down, and he commenced to gather his belongings together.  “I am angry with them,” he continued, as a final word on the subject, “because I hate the Germans.”