FROM ATHENS

Europe, whither goest thou?--the poignant question of to-day. The pride of Christian culture, the greatest
human achievement in history, with, as we thought before 1914, the seal of immortality set upon her, is now
perhaps moving towards dissolution and death. Europe has begun a rapid decline, though no one dares to
think that she will continue in it downward until she reaches the chaos and misery and barbarity from which
she sprang. Affairs will presently take a turn for the better, Europe will recover her balance and resume the
road of progress which she left seven years ago--prompts Hope.
"Europe must die in order to be re-born as something better"; "all must be destroyed," say the theorists of
revolution. "She staggers and falls and falls and plunges," seem to say the facts with the inexorableness of
Fate.

EXTRA LEAVES

(i) On Passports and "Circulation"
Mr. H. G. Wells, in "The Salvaging of Civilization," has very pleasantly contrasted the States of America with
the States of Europe--the Disunited States. America, where you can travel by through trains without showing
passports, without customs-barriers, without change of currency and without police-inquisition; America
where there is a free interchange of peoples and opinions, Europe lying in unexampled obstruction and
stagnation; America with its cheap post and universally-used telephone service, Europe with its expensive,
ill-managed posts and local and limited and expensive and contumacious telephone. At the time of writing
you can send a letter from San Francisco to London for less than it costs to send a similar letter from one
London suburb to another. In America you have inter-state telephone service, you have the constant extension

FROM CONSTANTINOPLE (I)

It has been a bleak early spring with snow on the uplands of Thrace. For those who travel from Paris to
Constantinople on that Western moving shuttle, the Orient Express, there would be nothing to trouble the
mind unpleasantly--except in that the more comfortable we are, the more we demand and the more we
grumble. But if you travel by the ordinary unheated train, where even the first-class carriages are more or less
bereft of glass and have the windows loosely boarded up with bits of old packing-cases, you taste something of the persistent northern wind which blows down sleet and rain from the Black Sea, from Russia, as it were
Russian unhappiness it was blowing down.

FROM CONSTANTINOPLE (II)

A night's journey in a trawler brings you to the Dardanelles--the outermost vital significance of dominion at
Constantinople. By the use of mines an invincible protection is easily thrown out. By the simple closing of the
straits Russian trade is throttled, and even all the powers of imperial Russia before the great war could not
open a way. No wonder that all ambitious Russians desired Constantinople and the Straits. If it ever becomes
possible for some small power to stand in Russia's way again, there is bound to be a recrudescence of Russia's
passion to go south. At the Dardanelles, however, there remains Allied control--British men-of-war, French
black troops, Greek governors, and the rest. All boats are challenged coming in, none going out, and otherwise
there is freedom of the seas.

FROM SOFIA

The last night at Constantinople was memorable, and it is strange to contrast the brilliance, the clamour, the
poignancy, of that time with the quiet gloom and dirt of Sofia. Dinner with two young Russians at the
"Kievsky Ugolok"; vodka was taken as if it were part of a rite. We were served by a beautiful woman with
little hands. All the lights were shaded and the violins crooned.
"The best of my youth gone in senseless fighting," said Count Tolstoy. "Twenty-two to twenty-eight, think of
it; surely the best years of life, and campaigning all the while, from Insterburg to Sevastopol, and who knows
what more."
"I am going to cut it all and start afresh," said Col. S. "I don't believe in the cause. If I could get a little farm in
Canada or California!"
"Well, you are married and have children, that makes the difference. You are bound to them. But honour
binds me to Russia--whatever happens."

FROM BELGRADE (I)

A personal friendship with Bishop Nicholas of Zicca brought the gift of his rooms in the Patriarchia, opposite
the Cathedral. Nicholas, better known during the war years as Father Nicholas Velimirovic, being on a
mission to the United States, his simple white-walled rooms hung with bright-coloured ikons were free, and
could be a home for a wanderer in an over-crowded city. Kostya Lukovic, who during the war graduated at
Cambridge, treated me as if I were the England to whom he could repay the gratitude he owed for our
hospitality to him. Dr. Yannic, also known to us in England, then a priest, now temporarily secretary to the
Constituent Assembly, was also very kind. A recommendation from Balugdic, the Minister at Athens, opened
many doors and obtained a separate carriage for me at night on some wild trains. Archimandrites and Abbots
entertained me lavishly at the shrines of the Frushta Gora. It can therefore be said that the Serbs know how to
treat an Englishman well when he passes through their country. Salutations therefore, and thanks! They fought

FROM BELGRADE (II)

Up on the cliff one evening a party of Serbs were listening to a Russian soldier, one of Wrangel's army
invalided to a hospital camp near Belgrade. "Which of these rivers is the Danube?" said he.
The Serbs pointed out where the Save joined the main stream, like a thread of silver joining a silver ribbon.
"Ah," said the Russian. "And my grandfather was killed on that river, fighting to free the Slavs. Defenceless
little brothers, the Slavs! When the war began the enemy was right into your capital of Belgrade at once, but
we Russians plunged into East Prussia. Yes, I was there, brothers, and was wounded and marched back to the
Niemen with my wound open----"
He recounted where he had been in the war, and was so circumstantial that one by one the Serbs said
good-bye and wished him luck and went away. And he was left standing there alone, looking over the gloomy
Austrian plain below where night was descending fast.
"Would you like to have tea?" I asked. "My lodging is quite close." He readily agreed, and so we went across
to the "Patriarchate" and up to Bishop Nikolai's white room.

FROM BUDAPEST

The ill-health of our new Europe needs no demonstration. "She's an ailing old lady," says Engineer N. "She's a typhoid convalescent," says Dr. R. "She's deaf and dumb and paralytic and subject to fits. She has sore limbs
and inflamed parts--in fact, a hopeless case," says a cheerful Hungarian. "But what does it matter whether Europe lives if her young daughter Hungary survives her?"
"That young daughter Hungary has already been in the Divorce Court," I hazarded.
"Well, Hungary is not going to alarm herself over the health of Mother Europe, anyway. Hungary has to look
after herself. Mother won't look after her."

FROM VIENNA

At Budapest you begin to suspect that you are in Europe; at Vienna you are sure of it--with its great array of
fine shops, full of elegancies and delectable grandeur which leave Paris and New York in the shade. The
whole press of Europe seems to have "written up" Vienna as "the ruined city" and "the end of a great capital,"
and even at Constantinople where terrible affliction was constantly before the eyes, the fiction held that
Vienna was even worse. You are, therefore agreeably surprised to find the wheels of modern civilization
running smoothly--a well-dressed, easy-going people on the streets and in the cafés, every business house
working to full capacity, and all at first glance going well. The children, and especially those of the working
class, look healthy and full of life. Starving Vienna seems somewhat of a myth.

EXTRA LEAVES

(iii) On Money and League of Nations Currency
In the course of this little tour of Europe I bought 1,000 francs and 4,000 liras, and 1,500 drachmas, 3,000
dinars, and the same number of levas, some lei and 20,000 piastres, 7,000 Hungarian crowns and 32,000
Austrian crowns, 3,000 Czech crowns, 10,000 German marks, 15,000 odd Polish marks, 500 Belgian francs,
and some paper money of the principality of Monaco.
You have to be somewhat of an arithmetician to think one week in piastres and the next in dinars, and the next
in crowns, and the next in marks. You are always losing but you always think you are winning. You afford
pleasure to strangers whenever you go because you can be robbed so easily and safely. In each country you
can be robbed coming in and robbed going out and generally robbed in between. You do not mind very much,
it is part of the legitimate expense of modern travel.

FROM PRAGUE

Czecho-slovakia is the watchdog of the new peace in Central Europe. She is the strongest new power, and is
manifestly the best governed State which has arisen out of the ruins of the old. The new Bohemia (for
Czecho-Slovakia is truly Bohemia) is a much more credible resurrection than the new Poland. One London
daily refused to believe in the existence of Czecho-Slovakia for a long while. "Unless I see it," said the editor,
"I will not be convinced." But Czecho-Slovakia is quite convincing--and is much less of a Frankenstein than
Jugo-slavia. The Czechs are no doubt obscurely placed in Europe, but the traveller when he gets to their
country--not the "seacoast of Bohemia"--will find that they make good showing.

FROM WARSAW

As at Constantinople, there is great over-crowding. There are three times as many people on the pavements as
on the pavements of Vienna or Prague. The Marshalkowsky is a-flocking from end to end. Finding a room for
the night is a hard task. You will see a great deal of Warsaw before you find a room. It is not a bad way to
obtain a first impression. I arrived at one in the afternoon and found a place for myself only at ten at night.
The once luxurious Hotel Bristol was full to-day, no hope for to-morrow, no, nor for to-morrow week. At the
Royal Hotel a lugubrious porter says "l'hotel n'existe plus." The Victoria, which was the first hotel I ever
stayed at in Russia, knew me no more. At the Metropole a preoccupied clerk said "Nima" without looking up
from the news from the Silesian front which was engrossing him. I went into a terribly shabby and dirty hotel
called the Amerikansky, and hoped they'd say "No," which they certainly did. Another doubtful establishment
with girls on the stairs was also gorged and replete with visitors. The Y.M.C.A. said they'd enough trouble
finding rooms for their own people. The Hotel de Rome was occupied by the Red Cross. The Kowiensky was
alles besetst; the Hotel de Saxe had not even a hope.

EXTRA LEAVES

(iv) On Nationality and an Armistice Baby
The personal idea of nationality suffered some heavy blows in the war and even heavier ones in the peace
which followed. A mature Austrian suddenly becomes a Czech, a Hungarian who knows only Magyar
becomes a Roumanian, a self-conscious Prussian is written into a Pole, and their hearts are supposed to
respond to new loyalties. The famous lines: "Breathes there a man with soul so dead" have now a comical
effect when recited in some parts of Europe. Men are saying such absurd things as "I am a German
Czecho-Slovak," "I am a Polish Austrian Jew," "I am a Russian Armenian Greek." A relief from the imbroglio
of nationalism might be found in the name of European with a higher loyalty to Europe as a whole, but few
have reached that stage of knowledge and feeling.

FROM MUNICH

The first day in Munich was marked by police inspection in bed. The police come early to the hotels so as to
catch people before they have got up and gone out. The only people who are immune are Bavarians. If you are
a foreigner, even if you are a German from another part of Germany--a Saxon, a Prussian, a Westphalian, it is
all the same, you must present yourself at the police-station and obtain permission to reside in Munich. This
means some hours in a stuffy room. You must write a request for the permission in German and bring it some
hours later and answer the usual set of questions and be charged 150 marks. I said I had not come to Germany
to study the police system, and so by dint of perseverance cut through half the formalities and the waiting time
and got away. An official wrote the request and even signed it for me himself. Nowhere is red-tape more
absurd than when it is being wound by a defeated nation after a great war.
Bavaria is encouraged to think of herself as a separate country. French policy foreshadows an independent
State of Southern Catholics. With that in view a French minister plenipotentiary has been sent to Munich, and

FROM BERLIN (I)

Old men and war-cripples as porters at the station, dirty streets encumbered by hawkers and their wares,
strings of pitiful beggars shaking their hands and exposing mortified limbs--can this be Berlin, Berlin the
prim, the orderly, the clean? Something has happened here in seven years, some sort of psychological change
has been wrought in the mind of a people. Here, as in some Slav countries, there are laws and they are not
kept, regulations and they are not observed. Unshaven men and ill-washed women on the streets, and dowdy,
hatless girls with dirty hair crowding into cheap cinema theatres! A city that had no slums and no poor in
1914 now becoming a slum en bloc. And the litter on the roadways! You will not find its like in Warsaw. You
must seek comparisons in the Bowery of New York or that part of the City of Westminster called Soho. The
horse has come back to Berlin to make up for loss of motors, and needs more scavengers to follow him than
the modern municipality can afford.

FROM BERLIN (II)

Berlin is a city of reason, not a city of faith. You cannot get people to try and do the impossible there. It loves
to grade itself upon the possible and do that. Hence the apathy regarding Germany's resurrection. Here all is
measured and planned and square and self-poised. No buildings aspire. The golden angels and the other things
which are high--are perched there. Some one put them up; they did not fly so high. All the great capitals of
Europe are redeemed more by their past than adorned by their present, but Berlin has no old Berlin to help
her. If all that is worth while in London were built in the spirit of Downing Street and Whitehall and the statue
of Nurse Cavell, it might be said that London was not unlike Berlin.

EXTRA LEAVES

(v) On "Clay Sparrows" and the Failure of Freedom
France and Germany are hazardously in agreement in regard to English and American liberal idealism. They
think it moonshine and the League of Nations a failure, and that Freedom has been tried and found wanting.
We are at school with Christ and have made our clay sparrows. Wilson's birds fly--ours won't. France is an
obstinate clay sparrow who sits perched on the wall. And what shall we say of the other clay sparrows? Do
they look like flying? The peoples won't take the freedom and the light that is offered them. We sing to them
and tempt them, but they do not respond.
Germany, however, does not believe in "free countries," and she is edified by the failure of freedom.
"Your gods fail you," said a Bavarian to us at dinner. "You'll have to try our gods after all."
"But it is not so. The little nations are all using their Freedom," some one rejoined.
"Abusing it," said the German.

FROM ROME

All roads lead to Rome. It would doubtless be tedious at this point to describe the obstacles on the road, and,
when Rome has been achieved, the all-night hunt for a room in a hotel, an adventure which now commonly
befalls the traveller to Rome. But it is a wonderful impression which you receive of this mighty city in the
silent watchful hours, when all are sleeping, and the living are nearer to the famous dead. The scenery seems
laid for some great historical drama--but it is in truth only laid for you and the poor fellow shouldering your
bag, and for a restless knocking at closed doors, trying to awaken slumberous porters who, like the man at
Macbeth's castle, swear they will "devil-porter it no longer." You settle down at last for a few hours sleep on a
couple of chairs in a waiting-room, but are prevented by a loquacious gentleman who calls himself a
"chasseur des hotels," and says that when a man has sought all night and found nothing, he is generally ready
for a proposition. The chasseur conducts you to a room in a house in a back street, a chill, red-tiled room, let

FROM MONTE CARLO

The voice of a man in the Riviera express: "I am absolutely broke. I'm up against it, up against the great It,
and it's neck or nothing for me, my boy--so I'm off for Monte Carlo. I'm going to leave it to Chance, and
Chance is the best counsellor after all. What's human wisdom by the side of Chance? Just a turn of the wheel,
and all my troubles are solved." "God d---n it, it's more sporting than fretting my brains out in a dirty city like London or Paris, and trying to
find a way out of my tangle. Heads I win, tails----well, devil take it, tails doesn't matter. I've lost, anyway."
It reminded me somehow of the title of a famous story: "Never Bet the Devil your Head." But there's no need

FROM LONDON

You would hardly think that the greatest drama in world history is being played out in Europe, and that
England was taking a part. You would hardly think that England herself was in mortal danger. London
astonishes the traveller. It seems entirely given over to trivial and alien interest. Betting on horses has never
reached such dimensions. Whilst the street-criers of Belgrade keep calling "Politika, Politika!" and the
attention of Berlin is ruefully pinned down to Reparations, and Paris is dignified and serious and national in
both newspapers and conversation, you hear nothing in the streets of London but, "What's the latest, Bill?"
and "I can tell you of a 'orse."
In the vestry of a fashionable church the admirers of a certain earnest preacher come to see him after the
sermon. Says a lady, "Well, padre, can you tell us the great secret?"
The priest pauses and reflects.

FROM PARIS

France is the mainspring of the new mechanism, and Paris the control. That is why I chose to go to Paris
last--so that all, even London, could be related to her. The initiative in European politics is taken by France
and she has the most active policy. Most other States wait to see what France is doing and shape their policies
accordingly. London is generally in opposition to Paris, but English action is so sluggish and so independable
that even those States who loathe the new France are obliged to assume that England does not really count.
With the exception of Greece, England is not giving active support or practical sympathy to any other country
in Europe. But France backs Poles and Turks and Hungarians and Serbs, and is carrying out a grand scheme
of world-policy clearly--if not very effectively.