Christine

" ...]in the most beautiful city in the world. You never knew such eagerness and persistence as these German boarders have when it comes to praising what is theirs, and also when it comes to criticizing what isn't theirs. They're so funny and personal. They say, for instance, London is too hideous for words, and then they look at me defiantly, as though they had been insulting some personal defect of mine and meant to brazen it out. They point out the horrors of the slums to me as though the slums were on my face. They tell me pityingly what they look like, what terrible blots and deformities they are, and how I-they say England, but no one could dream from their manner that it wasn't me-can never hope to be regarded as fit for self-respecting European society while these spots and sore places are not purged away. The other day they assured me that England as a nation is really unfit for any decent other nation to know politically, but they added, with stiff bows in my ...]."