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is quite easy. And it really does not matter what you write. I remember one
B.I. writing of a significant philosophical work and admitting in the
opening sentence that he did not understand it; still, I suppose the review
passed as buoyant and alarmingly sincere.)
Politically you must belong to the extreme left. You must, however,
bear a few things in mind:
1. You must not care a damn about the welfare of the people in this
country or abroad, because that would be 'practical politics' - and you
should only be interested in the ideological side of matters.
2. Do not belong to any party, because that would be 'regimentation.'
Whatever different parties achieve, it is much more interesting to criticize
everyone than to belong to the herd.
3. Do not hesitate to scorn Soviet Russia as reactionary and
imperialistic, the British Labour Party as a conglomeration of elderly Trade
Union Blimps, the French Socialists as 'confused people,' the other Western
Socialist parties as meek, bourgeois clubs, the American labour movements as
being in the pay of big business; and call all republicans, communists,
anarchists and nihilists 'backward, reactionary crypto-fascists.'
You should also invent a few truly original, constructive theories too,
such as: Only Brahmanism can save the world.
Spiritualism is a factor, growing immensely in importance, and a
practical, working coalition between ghosts and Trotskyites would be highly
desirable.
The abolition of all taxation would enrich the population so enormously
that everybody would be able to pay much more taxes than before.
Finally, remember the main point. Always be original ! It is not as
difficult as it sounds: you just have to copy the habits and sayings of a
few thousand other B.I.s.
Fix the little word de in front of your name. It has a remarkable
attraction. I knew a certain Leo Rosenberg from Graz who called himself
Lionel de Rosenberg and was a huge success in Deanery Mews as a Tyrolean
nobleman.
Believe that the aim of life is to have a nice time, go to nice places
and meet nice people. (Now: to have a nice time means to have two more
drinks daily than you can carry; nice places are the halls of great hotels,
intimate little clubs, night clubs and private houses with large radiograms
and no bookshelves; nice people are those who say silly things in good
English - nasty people are those who drop clever remarks as well as their
aitches.)
In the old days the man who had no money was not considered a
gentleman. In the era of an enlightened Mayfair this attitude has changed. A
gentleman may have money or may sponge on his friends; the criterion of a
gentleman is that however poor he may be he still refuse to do useful work.
You have to develop your charm with the greatest care. Always laugh at
everybody's jokes - but be careful to tell a joke from a serious and
profound observation. Be polite in a teasing, nonchalant manner. Sneer at
everything you are not intelligent enough to understand. You may flirt with
anybody's wife, but respect the ties of illegitimate friendships - unless
you have a really good opportunity which it would be such a pity to miss.
Don't forget that well-pressed trousers, carefully knotted ties and silk
shirts are the greatest of all human values. Never be sober after 6.30 p.m.
A little foreign blood is very advantageous, almost essential, to
become a really great British film producer.
The first aim of a British film producer should be to teach Hollywood a
lesson. Do not be misled, however, by the examples of Henry V or Pygmalion,
which tend to prove that excellent films can be made of great plays without
changing the out-of-date words of Shakespeare and the un-film-like dialogues
of Shaw by ten 'experts' who really know better.
Forget these misleading examples because it is obvious that Shakespeare
could not possibly have had any film technique, and recent research has
proved that he did not even have an eight-seater saloon car with his own
uniformed chauffeur.
You must not touch any typically American subject. For instance: a
young man of Carthage (Kentucky) who can whistle beautifully goes to town,
and after many disappointments forms his own swing-band and becomes the
leading conductor of New York's night life - which, if you can take the
implication of Hollywood films seriously, is one of the highest honours
which can be conferred on anyone in that country. At the same time he falls
in love with the cloakroom attendant of a drug-store* round the corner, a
platinum-blonde, ravishingly beautiful, who sings a little better than Galli
Curci and Deanna Durbin rolled into one and, in secret, has the greatest
histrionic talent of the century.
*Please note my extensive knowledge of the American language.
After a last-minute scandal with the world-famous prima donna she saves
the first night of her lover's show in the presence of an audience of six
million people by singing Gounod's slightly adapted song. (If you would be
my tootsie-bootsie, I would be your tootsie-bootsie'.) The young and mighty
successful band-leader marries the girl and employs Toscanini to clean his
mouth-organ. Or - to mention just one more example of the serious and 'deep'
type of American films - there is a gay, buoyant, happy and miserably poor
young man in New Golders Green (Alabama), who becomes tremendously rich just
by selling thousands of tractors and jet-propelled aeroplanes to other poor
fellows. The richer he becomes, the unhappier he is - which is a subtle
point to prove that money does not mean happiness, consequently one had
better be content to remain a poor labourer, possibly unemployed. He buys
seven huge motor cars and three private planes and is bitter and pained; he
builds a magnificent and ostentatious palace and gets gloomier and gloomier;
and when the woman he has loved without hope for fifteen years at last falls
in love with him, he breaks down completely and groans and moans desperately
for three days. To increase the 'deep' meaning of the film they photograph
the heroes from the most surprising angles: the cameraman crawls under
people's feet, swings on the chandelier, and hides himself in a bowl of
soup. Everybody is delighted with the new technique and admires the
director's richness of thought. English film directors follow a different
and quite original line. They have discovered somehow that the majority of
the public does not consist, after all, of idiots, and that an intelligent
film is not necessarily foredoomed to failure. It was a tremendous risk to
make experiments based on this assumption, but it has proved worth while.
There are certain rules you must bear in mind if you want to make a really
and truly British film.
1. The 'cockney heart' has definitely been discovered, i.e. the fact
that even people who drop their aitches have a heart. The discovery was
originally made by Mr Noel Coward, who is reported to have met a man who
knew someone who had actually seen a cockney from quite near. Ever since it
has been essential that a cockney should figure in every British film and
display his heart throughout the performance.
2. It has also been discovered that ordinary men occasionally use
unparliamentary expressions in the course of their every-day conversation.
It has been decided that the more often the adjective referring to the
sanguinary character of certain things or persons is used and the
exclamation 'Damn I ' is uttered, the more realistic and more convincing the
film becomes, as able seamen and flight-sergeants sometimes go so far as to
say 'Damni ' when they are carried away by passion. All bodies and
associations formed to preserve the purity of the English soul should note
that I do not agree with this habit - I simply record it. But as it is a
habit, the author readily agrees to supply by correspondence a further list
of the most expressive military terms which would make any new film
surprisingly realistic.
3. Nothing should be good enough for a British film producer. I have
heard of a gentleman (I don't know whether the story is true, or only
characteristic) who made a film about Egypt and had a sphinx built in the
studio. When he and his company sailed to Egypt to make some exterior shots,
he took his own sphinx with him to the desert. He was quite right, because
first of all the original sphinx is very old and film people should not use
second-hand stuff; secondly, the old sphinx might have been good enough for
Egyptians (who are all foreigners, after all) but not for a British film
company.
4. As I have seen political events successfully filmed as
detective-stories, and historical personages appear as 'great lovers' (and
nothing else), I have come to the conclusion that this slight change in the
character of a person is highly recommendable, and I advise the filming of
Peter Pan as a thriller, and the Concise Oxford Dictionary as a comic opera.
it is about the same to drive a car in England as anywhere else. To
change a punctured tyre in the wind and rain gives about the same pleasure
outside London as outside Rio de Janeiro; it is not more fun to try to start
up a cold motor with the handle in Moscow than in Manchester, the roughly
50-50 proportion between driving an average car and pushing it is the same
in Sydney and Edinburgh.
There are, however, a few characteristics which distinguish the English
motorist from the continental, and some points which the English motorist
has to remember.
1. In English towns there is a thirty miles an hour speed-limit and the
police keep a watchful eye on law-breakers. The fight against reckless
driving is directed extremely skilfully and carefully according to the very
best English detective-traditions. It is practically impossible to find out
whether you are being followed by a police car or not. There are, however, a
few indications which may help people of extraordinary intelligence and with
very keen powers of observation:
(a) The police always use a 13 h.p., blue Wolseley car;
(b) three uniformed policemen sit in it; and
(c) on these cars you can read the word police written in large letters
in front and rear, all in capitals - lit up during the hours of darkness.
2. I think England is the only country in the world where you have to
leave your lights on even if you park in a brilliantly lit-up street. The
advantage being that your battery gets exhausted, you cannot start up again
and consequently the number of road accidents are greatly reduced. Safety
first !
3. Only motorists can answer this puzzling question: What are taxis
for? A simple pedestrian knows that they are certainly not there to carry
passengers. Taxis, in fact, are a Christian institution. They are here to
teach drivers modesty and humility. They teach us never to be
over-confident; they remind us that we never can tell what the next moment
will bring for us, whether we shall be able to drive on or a taxi will bump
into us from the back or the side. ' ... and thou shalt fear day and night,
and shalt have none assurance of thy life' (Deut., chapter 28, verse 66).
4. There is a huge ideological warfare going on behind the scenes of
the motorist world.
Whenever you stop your car in the City, the West End or many other
places, two or three policemen rush at you and tell you that you must not
park there. Where may you park? They shrug their shoulders. There are a
couple of spots on the South Coast and in a village called Minchinhampton.
Three cars may park there for half an hour every other Sunday morning
between 7 and 8 a.m.
The police are perfectly right. After all, cars have been built to run,
and run fast, so they should not stop.
This healthy philosophy of the police has been seriously challenged by
a certain group of motorists who maintain that cars have been built to park
and not to move. These people drive out to Hampstead Heath or Richmond on
beautiful, sunny days, pull up all their windows and go to sleep. They do
not get a spot of air; they are miserably uncomfortable; they have
nightmares, and the whole procedure is called 'spending a lovely afternoon
in the open.'
if you become a bus driver there are three lovely and very popular
games you must learn to play.
1. Blind man's buff. When you turn right just signal by showing two
millimetres of your finger-tips. It is great fun when motorists do not
notice your signal and run into your huge bus with their tiny cars.
2. Hide and seek. Whenever you approach a request stop hide behind a
large lorry or another bus and when you have almost reached the stop shoot
off at a terrific speed. It is very amusing to see people shake their fists
at you. It is ten to one they miss some important business appointment.
3. Hospital game. If you have to stop for one reason or another, never
wait until the conductor rings the bell. If you start moving quickly and
unexpectedly, and if you are lucky - and in slippery weather you have a very
good chance - people will fall on top of one another. This looks extremely
funny from the driver's seat. (Sometimes the people themselves, who fall
into a muddy pool and break their legs, make a fuss, but, alas! every
society has its bores who have no sense of humour and cannot enjoy a joke at
their own expense.)
britain, far from being a 'decadent democracy', is a Spartan country.
This is mainly due to the British way of building towns, which dispenses
with the reasonable comfort enjoyed by all the other weak and effeminate
peoples of the world.
Medieval warriors wore steel breast-plates and leggings not only for
defence but also to keep up their fighting spirit; priests of the Middle
Ages tortured their bodies with hair-shirts; Indian yogis take their daily
nap lying on a carpet of nails to remain fit. The English plan their towns
in such a way that these replace the discomfort of steel breast-plates,
hair-shirts and nail-carpets.
On the Continent doctors, lawyers, booksellers -just to mention a few
examples - are sprinkled all over the city, so you can call on a good or at
least expensive doctor in any district. In England the idea is that it is
the address that makes the man. Doctors in London are crowded in Harley
Street, solicitors in Lincoln's Inn Fields, second-hand-bookshops in Charing
Cross Road, newspaper offices in Fleet Street, tailors in Saville Row,
car-merchants in Great Portland Street, theatres around Piccadilly Circus,
cinemas in Leicester Square, etc. If you have a chance of replanning London
you can greatly improve on this idea. All greengrocers should be placed in
Hornsey Lane (N6), all butchers in Mile End (e1), and all gentlemen's
conveniences in Bloomsbury (WC).
Now I should like to give you a little practical advice on how to build
an English town.
You must understand that an English town is a vast conspiracy to
mislead foreigners. You have to use century-old little practices and tricks.
1. First of all, never build a street straight. The English love
privacy and do not want to see one end of the street from the other end.
Make sudden curves in the streets and build them S-shaped too; the letters
L, T, V, Y, W and 0 are also becoming increasingly popular. It would be a
fine tribute to the Greeks to build a few П¤ and Н-shaped streets; it would
be an ingenious compliment to the Russians to favour the shape ПЇ, and I am
sure the Chinese would be more than flattered to see some <!-- [ПєПёЯ‚.
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2. Never build the houses of the same street in a straight line. The
British have always been a freedom-loving race and the 'freedom to build a
muddle' is one of their most ancient civic rights.
3. Now there are further camouflage possibilities in the numbering of
houses. Primitive continental races put even numbers on one side, odd
numbers on the other, and you always know that small numbers start from the
north or west. In England you have this system, too; but you may start
numbering your houses at one end, go up to a certain number on the same
side, then continue on the other side, going back in the opposite direction.
You may leave out some numbers if you are superstitious; and you may
continue the numbering in a side street; you may also give the same number
to two or three houses.
But this is far from the end. Many people refuse to have numbers
altogether, and they choose names. It is very pleasant, for instance, to
find a street with three hundred and fifty totally similar bungalows and
look for 'The Bungalow'. Or to arrive in a street where all the houses have
a charming view of a hill and try to find 'Hill View'. Or search for 'Seven
Oaks' and find a house with three apple-trees.
4. Give a different name to the street whenever it bends; but if the
curve is so sharp that it really makes two different streets, you may
keep the same name. On the other hand, if, owing to neglect, a street has
been built in a straight line it must be called by many different names
(High Holborn, New Oxford Street, Oxford Street, Bayswater Road, Netting
Hill Gate, Holland Park and so on).
5. As some cute foreigners would be able to learn their way about even
under such circumstances, some further precautions are necessary. Call
streets by various names: street, road, place, mews, crescent, avenue, rise,
lane, way, grove, park, gardens, alley, arch, path, walk, broadway,
promenade, gate, terrace, vale, view, hill, etc.*
* While this book was at the printers a correspondence in The Times
showed that the English have almost sixty synonyms for 'street.' If you add
to these the street names which stand alone (Piccadilly, Strand, etc.) and
the accepted and frequently used double names ('Garden Terrace', 'Church
Street', 'Park Road', etc.) the number of street names reaches or exceeds a
hundred. It has been suggested by one correspondent that this clearly proves
what wonderful imagination the English have. I believe it proves the
contrary. A West End street in London is not called 'Haymarket' because the
playful fancy of Londoners populates the district with romantically clad
medieval food dealers, but simply because they have not noticed as yet that
the hay trade has considerably declined between Piccadilly and Pall Mall in
the last three hundred years.
Now two further possibilities arise:
(a) Gather all sorts of streets and squares of the same name in one
neighbourhood: Belsize Park, Belsize Street, Belsize Road, Belsize Gardens,
Belsize Green, Belsize Circus, Belsize Yard, Belsize Viaduct, Belsize
Arcade, Belsize Heath, etc.
(b) Place a number of streets of exactly the same name in different
districts. If you have about twenty Princes Squares and Warwick Avenues in
the town, the muddle - you may claim without immodesty - will be complete.
6. Street names should be painted clearly and distinctly on large
boards. Then hide these boards carefully. Place them too high or too low, in
shadow and darkness, upside down and inside out, or, even better, lock them
up in a safe in your bank, otherwise they may give people some indication
about the names of the streets.
7. In order to break down the foreigner's last vestige of resistance
and shatter his morale, one further trick is advisable: Introduce the system
of squares - real squares, I mean - which run into four streets like this:
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With this simple device it is possible to build a street of which the
two sides have different names.
P.S. - I have been told that my above-described theory is all wrong and
is only due to my Central European conceit, because the English do not care
for the opinion of foreigners. In every other country, it has been
explained, people just build streets and towns following their own common
sense. England is the only country of the world where there is a Ministry of
Town and Country Planning. That is the real reason for the muddle.
there is a world of difference between the English Civil Servant and
the continental.
On the Continent (not speaking now of the Scandinavian countries),
Civil Servants assume a certain military air. They consider themselves
little generals; they use delaying tactics; they cannot withdraw armies, so
they withdraw permissions; they thunder like cannons and their speech is
like machine-gun fire; they cannot lose battles, they lose documents
instead. They consider that the sole aim of human society is to give jobs to
Civil Servants. A few wicked individuals, however (contemptible little
groups of people who are not Civil Servants), conspire against them, come to
them with various requests, complaints, problems, etc., with the sole
purpose of making a nuisance of themselves. These people get the reception
they deserve. They are kept waiting in cold and dirty ante-chambers (some of
them clean these rooms occasionally, but they are hired commissionaires
whose duty it is to re-dirty these rooms every morning); they have to stand,
often at attention, whilst they are spoken to; they are always shouted at in
a rude manner and their requests are turned down with malicious pleasure.
Sometimes - this is a popular cat and mouse game - they are sent to another
office on the fifth floor, from there they are directed to a third office in
the basement, where they are told that they should not have come there at
all and sent back to the original office. In that office they are thoroughly
told off in acrimonious language and dispatched to the fifth floor once
again, from there to the basement and the procedure goes on endlessly until
the poor fellows either get tired of the whole business and give up in
despair or become raving lunatics and go to an asylum asking for admittance.
If the latter case occurs they are told in the reception office that they
have come to the wrong place, they should go to another office on the fifth
floor, from which they are sent down to the basement, etc., etc., until they
give up being lunatics.
(If you want to catch me out and ask me who are then the people who
fill the continental lunatic asylums, I can give you the explanation: they
are all Civil Servants who know the ways and means of dealing with officials
and succeed in getting in somehow.)
If a former continental Civil Servant thought that this martial
behaviour would be accepted by the British public he would be badly
mistaken. The English Civil Servant considers himself no soldier but a
glorified businessman. He is smooth and courteous; he smiles in a superior
way; he is agreeable and obliging.
If so - you may ask - how can he achieve the supreme object of his vast
and noble organization, namely, not to transact any business and be left in
peace to read a good murder story undisturbed?
There are various, centuries-old, true British traditions to secure
this aim.
1.All orders and directives to the public are worded in such a way that
they should have no meaning whatever.
2. All official letters are written in such a language that the oracles
of Delphi sound as examples of clear, outspoken, straightforward statements
compared with them.
3. Civil Servants never make decisions, they only promise to
'consider,' - 'consider favourably' - or - and this is the utmost -
'reconsider' certain questions.
4. In principle the British Civil Servant stands always at the disposal
of the public. In practice he is either in 'conference' or out for lunch, or
in but having his tea, or just out. Some develop an admirable technique of
going out for tea before coming back from lunch.
The British Civil Servant, unlike the rough bully we often find on the
Continent, is the Obedient Servant of the public. Before the war, an alien
in this country was ordered to leave. He asked for extension of his staying
permit, but was refused. He stayed on all the same, and after a while he
received the following letter (I quote from memory):
Dear Sir, The Under-Secretary of State presents his compliments and
regrets that he is unable to reconsider your case, and begs to inform you
that unless you kindly leave this country within 34 hours you will be
forcibly expelled.
Your Obedient Servant,
x x x
On the Continent rich and influential people, or those who have
friends, cousins, brothers-in-law, tenants, business associates, etc., in an
office may have their requests fulfilled. In England there is no such
corruption and your obedient servant just will not do a thing whoever you
may be. And this is the real beauty of democracy.
The Fact
there was some trouble with the Buburuk tribe in the Pacific Island,
Charamak. A party of ten English and two American soldiers, under the
command of Capt. R. L. A. T. W. Tilbury, raided the island and took 217
revolutionary, native troublemakers prisoner and wrecked two large
oil-dumps. The party remained ashore an hour-and-a-half and returned to
their base without loss to themselves.
How to report this event? It depends which newspaper you work for.
. . . It would be exceedingly perilous to overestimate the significance
of the raid, but it can be fairly proclaimed that it would be even more
dangerous to underestimate it. The success of the raid clearly proves that
the native defences are not invulnerable; it would be fallacious and
deceptive, however, to conclude that these defences are vulnerable. The
number of revolutionaries captured cannot be safely stated, but it seems
likely that the number is well over 216 but well under 218.
You may become an M.P. (Nothing is impossible - this would not be even
unprecedented.) You may hear then the following statement by a member of Her
Majesty's Government:
'Concerning the two wrecked oil-dumps I can give this information to
the House. In the first half of this year the amount of native oil destroyed
by the Army, Navy and the R.A.F. - excluding however, the Fleet Air Arm - is
one-half as much as three times the amount destroyed during the
corresponding months of the previous year, seven and a half times as much as
the two-fifths destroyed two years ago and three-quarters as much again as
twelve times one-sixth destroyed three years ago.' (Loud cheers from the
Government benches.)
You jump to your feet and ask this question:
You: Is the Right Hon. Gentleman aware that people in this country are
puzzled and worried by the fact that Charamak was raided and not Ragamak?
the right hon. member: I have nothing to add to my statement given on
2nd August, 1892.
EVENING STANDARD (Londoner's Diary)
The most interesting feature of the Charamak raid is the fact that
Reggie Tilbury is the fifth son of the Earl of Bayswater. He was an Oxford
Blue, a first-class cricketerand quite good at polo. When I talked to his
wife (Lady Clarisse, the daughter of Lord Elasson) at Claridges today, she
wore a black suit and a tiny black hat with a yellow feather in it. She
said: 'Reggie was always very much interested in warfare.' Later she
remarked : 'It was clever of him, wasn't it?'
You may write a letter to the Editor of The Times:
Sir, - In connection with the Charamak raid I should like to mention as
a matter of considerable interest that it was in that little Pacific Island
that the distinguished English poet, John Flat, wrote his famous poem 'The
Cod' in 1693. Yours, etc. . ..
You may read this answer on the following day.
Sir, - I am very grateful to Mr . . . for calling attention to John
Flat's poem 'The Cod.' May I be allowed to use this opportunity, however, to
correct a widespread and in my view very unfortunate error which the great
masses of the British people seem to share with your correspondent. "The
Cod,' although John Flat started writing it in 1603, was only finished in
the early days of January 1694.
Yours, etc. . . .
If you are the London correspondent of the American paper THE OKLAHOMA
SUN simply cable this:
'Yanks Conquer Pacific Ocean.'
the verb to naturalize clearly proves what the British think of you.
Before you are admitted to British citizenship you are not even considered a
natural human being. I looked up the word natural (na'tural) in the Pocket
Oxford Dictionary (p. 251); it says: Of or according to or provided by
nature, physically existing, innate, instinctive, normal, not miraculous or
spiritual or artificial or conventional. . . . Note that before you obtain
British citizenship, they simply doubt that you are provided by nature.
According to the Pocket Oxford Dictionary the word 'natural' has a
second meaning, too: Half-witted person. This second meaning, however, is
irrelevant from the point of view of our present argument.
If you are tired of not being provided by nature, not being physically
existing and being miraculous and conventional at the same time, apply for
British citizenship. Roughly speaking, there are two possibilities: it will
be granted to you, or not.
In the first case you must recognize and revise your attitude to life.
You must pretend that you are everything you are not and you must look down
upon everything you are.
Copy the attitude of an English acquaintance of mine - let us call him
Gregory Baker. He, an English solicitor, feels particularly deep contempt
for the following classes of people: foreigners, Americans, Frenchmen,
Irishmen, Scotsmen and Welshmen, Jews, workers, clerks, poor people,
non-professional men, business men, actors, journalists and literary men,
women, solicitors who do not practise in his immediate neighbourhood,
solicitors who are hard up and solicitors who are too rich. Socialists,
Liberals, Tory-reformers (Communists are not worthy even of his contempt);
he looks down upon his mother, because she has a business mind, his wife,
because she comes from a non-professional county family, his brother,
because although he is a professional officer he does not serve with the
Guards, Hussars, or at least with a county regiment. He adores and admires
his seven-years old son, because the shape of his nose resembles his own. If
naturalized, remember these rules:
1. You must start eating porridge for breakfast and allege that you
like it.
2. Speak English with your former compatriots. Deny that you know any
foreign language (including your mother tongue). The knowledge of foreign
languages is very un-English. A little French is permissible, but only with
an atrocious accent.
3. Revise your library. Get rid of all foreign writers whether in the
original or translated into English. The works of Dostoyevsky should be
replaced by a volume on English Birds; the collected works of Proust by a
book called 'Interior Decoration in the Regency Period'; and Pascal's
Pensees by the 'Life and Thoughts of a Scottish Salmon'.
4. Speaking of your new compatriots, always use the first person
plural.
In this aspect, though, a certain caution is advisable. I know a
naturalized Britisher who, talking to a young man, repeatedly used the
phrase 'We Englishmen.' The young man looked at him, took his pipe out of
his mouth and remarked softly: 'Sorry, Sir, I'm a Welshman,' turned his back
on him and walked away.
The same gentleman was listening to a conversation. It was mentioned
that the Japanese had claimed to have shot down 22 planes.
'What - ours?' he asked indignantly.
His English hostess answered icily:
'No - ours.'
The Land of the Rising Yen
Everyone writes about the tea ceremony in Japan, but who, except George
Mikes, notices the way the rubbish is thrown out? Everyone reports his own
reaction to the Japanese sense of tradition, but who else spots the reaction
of the Japanese to their own sense of tradition?
Whether he is describing morals or manners, George Mikes looks at the
Japanese as he looks at the rest of mankind - with his own inscrutable blend
of curiosity, respect, affection and charm.
Also published
How to be a Brit
How to be a Decadent
How to be a Guru
How to be Poor
How to be a Yank
B.I. writing of a significant philosophical work and admitting in the
opening sentence that he did not understand it; still, I suppose the review
passed as buoyant and alarmingly sincere.)
Politically you must belong to the extreme left. You must, however,
bear a few things in mind:
1. You must not care a damn about the welfare of the people in this
country or abroad, because that would be 'practical politics' - and you
should only be interested in the ideological side of matters.
2. Do not belong to any party, because that would be 'regimentation.'
Whatever different parties achieve, it is much more interesting to criticize
everyone than to belong to the herd.
3. Do not hesitate to scorn Soviet Russia as reactionary and
imperialistic, the British Labour Party as a conglomeration of elderly Trade
Union Blimps, the French Socialists as 'confused people,' the other Western
Socialist parties as meek, bourgeois clubs, the American labour movements as
being in the pay of big business; and call all republicans, communists,
anarchists and nihilists 'backward, reactionary crypto-fascists.'
You should also invent a few truly original, constructive theories too,
such as: Only Brahmanism can save the world.
Spiritualism is a factor, growing immensely in importance, and a
practical, working coalition between ghosts and Trotskyites would be highly
desirable.
The abolition of all taxation would enrich the population so enormously
that everybody would be able to pay much more taxes than before.
Finally, remember the main point. Always be original ! It is not as
difficult as it sounds: you just have to copy the habits and sayings of a
few thousand other B.I.s.
Fix the little word de in front of your name. It has a remarkable
attraction. I knew a certain Leo Rosenberg from Graz who called himself
Lionel de Rosenberg and was a huge success in Deanery Mews as a Tyrolean
nobleman.
Believe that the aim of life is to have a nice time, go to nice places
and meet nice people. (Now: to have a nice time means to have two more
drinks daily than you can carry; nice places are the halls of great hotels,
intimate little clubs, night clubs and private houses with large radiograms
and no bookshelves; nice people are those who say silly things in good
English - nasty people are those who drop clever remarks as well as their
aitches.)
In the old days the man who had no money was not considered a
gentleman. In the era of an enlightened Mayfair this attitude has changed. A
gentleman may have money or may sponge on his friends; the criterion of a
gentleman is that however poor he may be he still refuse to do useful work.
You have to develop your charm with the greatest care. Always laugh at
everybody's jokes - but be careful to tell a joke from a serious and
profound observation. Be polite in a teasing, nonchalant manner. Sneer at
everything you are not intelligent enough to understand. You may flirt with
anybody's wife, but respect the ties of illegitimate friendships - unless
you have a really good opportunity which it would be such a pity to miss.
Don't forget that well-pressed trousers, carefully knotted ties and silk
shirts are the greatest of all human values. Never be sober after 6.30 p.m.
A little foreign blood is very advantageous, almost essential, to
become a really great British film producer.
The first aim of a British film producer should be to teach Hollywood a
lesson. Do not be misled, however, by the examples of Henry V or Pygmalion,
which tend to prove that excellent films can be made of great plays without
changing the out-of-date words of Shakespeare and the un-film-like dialogues
of Shaw by ten 'experts' who really know better.
Forget these misleading examples because it is obvious that Shakespeare
could not possibly have had any film technique, and recent research has
proved that he did not even have an eight-seater saloon car with his own
uniformed chauffeur.
You must not touch any typically American subject. For instance: a
young man of Carthage (Kentucky) who can whistle beautifully goes to town,
and after many disappointments forms his own swing-band and becomes the
leading conductor of New York's night life - which, if you can take the
implication of Hollywood films seriously, is one of the highest honours
which can be conferred on anyone in that country. At the same time he falls
in love with the cloakroom attendant of a drug-store* round the corner, a
platinum-blonde, ravishingly beautiful, who sings a little better than Galli
Curci and Deanna Durbin rolled into one and, in secret, has the greatest
histrionic talent of the century.
*Please note my extensive knowledge of the American language.
After a last-minute scandal with the world-famous prima donna she saves
the first night of her lover's show in the presence of an audience of six
million people by singing Gounod's slightly adapted song. (If you would be
my tootsie-bootsie, I would be your tootsie-bootsie'.) The young and mighty
successful band-leader marries the girl and employs Toscanini to clean his
mouth-organ. Or - to mention just one more example of the serious and 'deep'
type of American films - there is a gay, buoyant, happy and miserably poor
young man in New Golders Green (Alabama), who becomes tremendously rich just
by selling thousands of tractors and jet-propelled aeroplanes to other poor
fellows. The richer he becomes, the unhappier he is - which is a subtle
point to prove that money does not mean happiness, consequently one had
better be content to remain a poor labourer, possibly unemployed. He buys
seven huge motor cars and three private planes and is bitter and pained; he
builds a magnificent and ostentatious palace and gets gloomier and gloomier;
and when the woman he has loved without hope for fifteen years at last falls
in love with him, he breaks down completely and groans and moans desperately
for three days. To increase the 'deep' meaning of the film they photograph
the heroes from the most surprising angles: the cameraman crawls under
people's feet, swings on the chandelier, and hides himself in a bowl of
soup. Everybody is delighted with the new technique and admires the
director's richness of thought. English film directors follow a different
and quite original line. They have discovered somehow that the majority of
the public does not consist, after all, of idiots, and that an intelligent
film is not necessarily foredoomed to failure. It was a tremendous risk to
make experiments based on this assumption, but it has proved worth while.
There are certain rules you must bear in mind if you want to make a really
and truly British film.
1. The 'cockney heart' has definitely been discovered, i.e. the fact
that even people who drop their aitches have a heart. The discovery was
originally made by Mr Noel Coward, who is reported to have met a man who
knew someone who had actually seen a cockney from quite near. Ever since it
has been essential that a cockney should figure in every British film and
display his heart throughout the performance.
2. It has also been discovered that ordinary men occasionally use
unparliamentary expressions in the course of their every-day conversation.
It has been decided that the more often the adjective referring to the
sanguinary character of certain things or persons is used and the
exclamation 'Damn I ' is uttered, the more realistic and more convincing the
film becomes, as able seamen and flight-sergeants sometimes go so far as to
say 'Damni ' when they are carried away by passion. All bodies and
associations formed to preserve the purity of the English soul should note
that I do not agree with this habit - I simply record it. But as it is a
habit, the author readily agrees to supply by correspondence a further list
of the most expressive military terms which would make any new film
surprisingly realistic.
3. Nothing should be good enough for a British film producer. I have
heard of a gentleman (I don't know whether the story is true, or only
characteristic) who made a film about Egypt and had a sphinx built in the
studio. When he and his company sailed to Egypt to make some exterior shots,
he took his own sphinx with him to the desert. He was quite right, because
first of all the original sphinx is very old and film people should not use
second-hand stuff; secondly, the old sphinx might have been good enough for
Egyptians (who are all foreigners, after all) but not for a British film
company.
4. As I have seen political events successfully filmed as
detective-stories, and historical personages appear as 'great lovers' (and
nothing else), I have come to the conclusion that this slight change in the
character of a person is highly recommendable, and I advise the filming of
Peter Pan as a thriller, and the Concise Oxford Dictionary as a comic opera.
it is about the same to drive a car in England as anywhere else. To
change a punctured tyre in the wind and rain gives about the same pleasure
outside London as outside Rio de Janeiro; it is not more fun to try to start
up a cold motor with the handle in Moscow than in Manchester, the roughly
50-50 proportion between driving an average car and pushing it is the same
in Sydney and Edinburgh.
There are, however, a few characteristics which distinguish the English
motorist from the continental, and some points which the English motorist
has to remember.
1. In English towns there is a thirty miles an hour speed-limit and the
police keep a watchful eye on law-breakers. The fight against reckless
driving is directed extremely skilfully and carefully according to the very
best English detective-traditions. It is practically impossible to find out
whether you are being followed by a police car or not. There are, however, a
few indications which may help people of extraordinary intelligence and with
very keen powers of observation:
(a) The police always use a 13 h.p., blue Wolseley car;
(b) three uniformed policemen sit in it; and
(c) on these cars you can read the word police written in large letters
in front and rear, all in capitals - lit up during the hours of darkness.
2. I think England is the only country in the world where you have to
leave your lights on even if you park in a brilliantly lit-up street. The
advantage being that your battery gets exhausted, you cannot start up again
and consequently the number of road accidents are greatly reduced. Safety
first !
3. Only motorists can answer this puzzling question: What are taxis
for? A simple pedestrian knows that they are certainly not there to carry
passengers. Taxis, in fact, are a Christian institution. They are here to
teach drivers modesty and humility. They teach us never to be
over-confident; they remind us that we never can tell what the next moment
will bring for us, whether we shall be able to drive on or a taxi will bump
into us from the back or the side. ' ... and thou shalt fear day and night,
and shalt have none assurance of thy life' (Deut., chapter 28, verse 66).
4. There is a huge ideological warfare going on behind the scenes of
the motorist world.
Whenever you stop your car in the City, the West End or many other
places, two or three policemen rush at you and tell you that you must not
park there. Where may you park? They shrug their shoulders. There are a
couple of spots on the South Coast and in a village called Minchinhampton.
Three cars may park there for half an hour every other Sunday morning
between 7 and 8 a.m.
The police are perfectly right. After all, cars have been built to run,
and run fast, so they should not stop.
This healthy philosophy of the police has been seriously challenged by
a certain group of motorists who maintain that cars have been built to park
and not to move. These people drive out to Hampstead Heath or Richmond on
beautiful, sunny days, pull up all their windows and go to sleep. They do
not get a spot of air; they are miserably uncomfortable; they have
nightmares, and the whole procedure is called 'spending a lovely afternoon
in the open.'
if you become a bus driver there are three lovely and very popular
games you must learn to play.
1. Blind man's buff. When you turn right just signal by showing two
millimetres of your finger-tips. It is great fun when motorists do not
notice your signal and run into your huge bus with their tiny cars.
2. Hide and seek. Whenever you approach a request stop hide behind a
large lorry or another bus and when you have almost reached the stop shoot
off at a terrific speed. It is very amusing to see people shake their fists
at you. It is ten to one they miss some important business appointment.
3. Hospital game. If you have to stop for one reason or another, never
wait until the conductor rings the bell. If you start moving quickly and
unexpectedly, and if you are lucky - and in slippery weather you have a very
good chance - people will fall on top of one another. This looks extremely
funny from the driver's seat. (Sometimes the people themselves, who fall
into a muddy pool and break their legs, make a fuss, but, alas! every
society has its bores who have no sense of humour and cannot enjoy a joke at
their own expense.)
britain, far from being a 'decadent democracy', is a Spartan country.
This is mainly due to the British way of building towns, which dispenses
with the reasonable comfort enjoyed by all the other weak and effeminate
peoples of the world.
Medieval warriors wore steel breast-plates and leggings not only for
defence but also to keep up their fighting spirit; priests of the Middle
Ages tortured their bodies with hair-shirts; Indian yogis take their daily
nap lying on a carpet of nails to remain fit. The English plan their towns
in such a way that these replace the discomfort of steel breast-plates,
hair-shirts and nail-carpets.
On the Continent doctors, lawyers, booksellers -just to mention a few
examples - are sprinkled all over the city, so you can call on a good or at
least expensive doctor in any district. In England the idea is that it is
the address that makes the man. Doctors in London are crowded in Harley
Street, solicitors in Lincoln's Inn Fields, second-hand-bookshops in Charing
Cross Road, newspaper offices in Fleet Street, tailors in Saville Row,
car-merchants in Great Portland Street, theatres around Piccadilly Circus,
cinemas in Leicester Square, etc. If you have a chance of replanning London
you can greatly improve on this idea. All greengrocers should be placed in
Hornsey Lane (N6), all butchers in Mile End (e1), and all gentlemen's
conveniences in Bloomsbury (WC).
Now I should like to give you a little practical advice on how to build
an English town.
You must understand that an English town is a vast conspiracy to
mislead foreigners. You have to use century-old little practices and tricks.
1. First of all, never build a street straight. The English love
privacy and do not want to see one end of the street from the other end.
Make sudden curves in the streets and build them S-shaped too; the letters
L, T, V, Y, W and 0 are also becoming increasingly popular. It would be a
fine tribute to the Greeks to build a few П¤ and Н-shaped streets; it would
be an ingenious compliment to the Russians to favour the shape ПЇ, and I am
sure the Chinese would be more than flattered to see some <!-- [ПєПёЯ‚.
ПёПµЯЂПѕПіП»ПёЯ„]-- >-shaped thoroughfares.
2. Never build the houses of the same street in a straight line. The
British have always been a freedom-loving race and the 'freedom to build a
muddle' is one of their most ancient civic rights.
3. Now there are further camouflage possibilities in the numbering of
houses. Primitive continental races put even numbers on one side, odd
numbers on the other, and you always know that small numbers start from the
north or west. In England you have this system, too; but you may start
numbering your houses at one end, go up to a certain number on the same
side, then continue on the other side, going back in the opposite direction.
You may leave out some numbers if you are superstitious; and you may
continue the numbering in a side street; you may also give the same number
to two or three houses.
But this is far from the end. Many people refuse to have numbers
altogether, and they choose names. It is very pleasant, for instance, to
find a street with three hundred and fifty totally similar bungalows and
look for 'The Bungalow'. Or to arrive in a street where all the houses have
a charming view of a hill and try to find 'Hill View'. Or search for 'Seven
Oaks' and find a house with three apple-trees.
4. Give a different name to the street whenever it bends; but if the
curve is so sharp that it really makes two different streets, you may
keep the same name. On the other hand, if, owing to neglect, a street has
been built in a straight line it must be called by many different names
(High Holborn, New Oxford Street, Oxford Street, Bayswater Road, Netting
Hill Gate, Holland Park and so on).
5. As some cute foreigners would be able to learn their way about even
under such circumstances, some further precautions are necessary. Call
streets by various names: street, road, place, mews, crescent, avenue, rise,
lane, way, grove, park, gardens, alley, arch, path, walk, broadway,
promenade, gate, terrace, vale, view, hill, etc.*
* While this book was at the printers a correspondence in The Times
showed that the English have almost sixty synonyms for 'street.' If you add
to these the street names which stand alone (Piccadilly, Strand, etc.) and
the accepted and frequently used double names ('Garden Terrace', 'Church
Street', 'Park Road', etc.) the number of street names reaches or exceeds a
hundred. It has been suggested by one correspondent that this clearly proves
what wonderful imagination the English have. I believe it proves the
contrary. A West End street in London is not called 'Haymarket' because the
playful fancy of Londoners populates the district with romantically clad
medieval food dealers, but simply because they have not noticed as yet that
the hay trade has considerably declined between Piccadilly and Pall Mall in
the last three hundred years.
Now two further possibilities arise:
(a) Gather all sorts of streets and squares of the same name in one
neighbourhood: Belsize Park, Belsize Street, Belsize Road, Belsize Gardens,
Belsize Green, Belsize Circus, Belsize Yard, Belsize Viaduct, Belsize
Arcade, Belsize Heath, etc.
(b) Place a number of streets of exactly the same name in different
districts. If you have about twenty Princes Squares and Warwick Avenues in
the town, the muddle - you may claim without immodesty - will be complete.
6. Street names should be painted clearly and distinctly on large
boards. Then hide these boards carefully. Place them too high or too low, in
shadow and darkness, upside down and inside out, or, even better, lock them
up in a safe in your bank, otherwise they may give people some indication
about the names of the streets.
7. In order to break down the foreigner's last vestige of resistance
and shatter his morale, one further trick is advisable: Introduce the system
of squares - real squares, I mean - which run into four streets like this:
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With this simple device it is possible to build a street of which the
two sides have different names.
P.S. - I have been told that my above-described theory is all wrong and
is only due to my Central European conceit, because the English do not care
for the opinion of foreigners. In every other country, it has been
explained, people just build streets and towns following their own common
sense. England is the only country of the world where there is a Ministry of
Town and Country Planning. That is the real reason for the muddle.
there is a world of difference between the English Civil Servant and
the continental.
On the Continent (not speaking now of the Scandinavian countries),
Civil Servants assume a certain military air. They consider themselves
little generals; they use delaying tactics; they cannot withdraw armies, so
they withdraw permissions; they thunder like cannons and their speech is
like machine-gun fire; they cannot lose battles, they lose documents
instead. They consider that the sole aim of human society is to give jobs to
Civil Servants. A few wicked individuals, however (contemptible little
groups of people who are not Civil Servants), conspire against them, come to
them with various requests, complaints, problems, etc., with the sole
purpose of making a nuisance of themselves. These people get the reception
they deserve. They are kept waiting in cold and dirty ante-chambers (some of
them clean these rooms occasionally, but they are hired commissionaires
whose duty it is to re-dirty these rooms every morning); they have to stand,
often at attention, whilst they are spoken to; they are always shouted at in
a rude manner and their requests are turned down with malicious pleasure.
Sometimes - this is a popular cat and mouse game - they are sent to another
office on the fifth floor, from there they are directed to a third office in
the basement, where they are told that they should not have come there at
all and sent back to the original office. In that office they are thoroughly
told off in acrimonious language and dispatched to the fifth floor once
again, from there to the basement and the procedure goes on endlessly until
the poor fellows either get tired of the whole business and give up in
despair or become raving lunatics and go to an asylum asking for admittance.
If the latter case occurs they are told in the reception office that they
have come to the wrong place, they should go to another office on the fifth
floor, from which they are sent down to the basement, etc., etc., until they
give up being lunatics.
(If you want to catch me out and ask me who are then the people who
fill the continental lunatic asylums, I can give you the explanation: they
are all Civil Servants who know the ways and means of dealing with officials
and succeed in getting in somehow.)
If a former continental Civil Servant thought that this martial
behaviour would be accepted by the British public he would be badly
mistaken. The English Civil Servant considers himself no soldier but a
glorified businessman. He is smooth and courteous; he smiles in a superior
way; he is agreeable and obliging.
If so - you may ask - how can he achieve the supreme object of his vast
and noble organization, namely, not to transact any business and be left in
peace to read a good murder story undisturbed?
There are various, centuries-old, true British traditions to secure
this aim.
1.All orders and directives to the public are worded in such a way that
they should have no meaning whatever.
2. All official letters are written in such a language that the oracles
of Delphi sound as examples of clear, outspoken, straightforward statements
compared with them.
3. Civil Servants never make decisions, they only promise to
'consider,' - 'consider favourably' - or - and this is the utmost -
'reconsider' certain questions.
4. In principle the British Civil Servant stands always at the disposal
of the public. In practice he is either in 'conference' or out for lunch, or
in but having his tea, or just out. Some develop an admirable technique of
going out for tea before coming back from lunch.
The British Civil Servant, unlike the rough bully we often find on the
Continent, is the Obedient Servant of the public. Before the war, an alien
in this country was ordered to leave. He asked for extension of his staying
permit, but was refused. He stayed on all the same, and after a while he
received the following letter (I quote from memory):
Dear Sir, The Under-Secretary of State presents his compliments and
regrets that he is unable to reconsider your case, and begs to inform you
that unless you kindly leave this country within 34 hours you will be
forcibly expelled.
Your Obedient Servant,
x x x
On the Continent rich and influential people, or those who have
friends, cousins, brothers-in-law, tenants, business associates, etc., in an
office may have their requests fulfilled. In England there is no such
corruption and your obedient servant just will not do a thing whoever you
may be. And this is the real beauty of democracy.
The Fact
there was some trouble with the Buburuk tribe in the Pacific Island,
Charamak. A party of ten English and two American soldiers, under the
command of Capt. R. L. A. T. W. Tilbury, raided the island and took 217
revolutionary, native troublemakers prisoner and wrecked two large
oil-dumps. The party remained ashore an hour-and-a-half and returned to
their base without loss to themselves.
How to report this event? It depends which newspaper you work for.
. . . It would be exceedingly perilous to overestimate the significance
of the raid, but it can be fairly proclaimed that it would be even more
dangerous to underestimate it. The success of the raid clearly proves that
the native defences are not invulnerable; it would be fallacious and
deceptive, however, to conclude that these defences are vulnerable. The
number of revolutionaries captured cannot be safely stated, but it seems
likely that the number is well over 216 but well under 218.
You may become an M.P. (Nothing is impossible - this would not be even
unprecedented.) You may hear then the following statement by a member of Her
Majesty's Government:
'Concerning the two wrecked oil-dumps I can give this information to
the House. In the first half of this year the amount of native oil destroyed
by the Army, Navy and the R.A.F. - excluding however, the Fleet Air Arm - is
one-half as much as three times the amount destroyed during the
corresponding months of the previous year, seven and a half times as much as
the two-fifths destroyed two years ago and three-quarters as much again as
twelve times one-sixth destroyed three years ago.' (Loud cheers from the
Government benches.)
You jump to your feet and ask this question:
You: Is the Right Hon. Gentleman aware that people in this country are
puzzled and worried by the fact that Charamak was raided and not Ragamak?
the right hon. member: I have nothing to add to my statement given on
2nd August, 1892.
EVENING STANDARD (Londoner's Diary)
The most interesting feature of the Charamak raid is the fact that
Reggie Tilbury is the fifth son of the Earl of Bayswater. He was an Oxford
Blue, a first-class cricketerand quite good at polo. When I talked to his
wife (Lady Clarisse, the daughter of Lord Elasson) at Claridges today, she
wore a black suit and a tiny black hat with a yellow feather in it. She
said: 'Reggie was always very much interested in warfare.' Later she
remarked : 'It was clever of him, wasn't it?'
You may write a letter to the Editor of The Times:
Sir, - In connection with the Charamak raid I should like to mention as
a matter of considerable interest that it was in that little Pacific Island
that the distinguished English poet, John Flat, wrote his famous poem 'The
Cod' in 1693. Yours, etc. . ..
You may read this answer on the following day.
Sir, - I am very grateful to Mr . . . for calling attention to John
Flat's poem 'The Cod.' May I be allowed to use this opportunity, however, to
correct a widespread and in my view very unfortunate error which the great
masses of the British people seem to share with your correspondent. "The
Cod,' although John Flat started writing it in 1603, was only finished in
the early days of January 1694.
Yours, etc. . . .
If you are the London correspondent of the American paper THE OKLAHOMA
SUN simply cable this:
'Yanks Conquer Pacific Ocean.'
the verb to naturalize clearly proves what the British think of you.
Before you are admitted to British citizenship you are not even considered a
natural human being. I looked up the word natural (na'tural) in the Pocket
Oxford Dictionary (p. 251); it says: Of or according to or provided by
nature, physically existing, innate, instinctive, normal, not miraculous or
spiritual or artificial or conventional. . . . Note that before you obtain
British citizenship, they simply doubt that you are provided by nature.
According to the Pocket Oxford Dictionary the word 'natural' has a
second meaning, too: Half-witted person. This second meaning, however, is
irrelevant from the point of view of our present argument.
If you are tired of not being provided by nature, not being physically
existing and being miraculous and conventional at the same time, apply for
British citizenship. Roughly speaking, there are two possibilities: it will
be granted to you, or not.
In the first case you must recognize and revise your attitude to life.
You must pretend that you are everything you are not and you must look down
upon everything you are.
Copy the attitude of an English acquaintance of mine - let us call him
Gregory Baker. He, an English solicitor, feels particularly deep contempt
for the following classes of people: foreigners, Americans, Frenchmen,
Irishmen, Scotsmen and Welshmen, Jews, workers, clerks, poor people,
non-professional men, business men, actors, journalists and literary men,
women, solicitors who do not practise in his immediate neighbourhood,
solicitors who are hard up and solicitors who are too rich. Socialists,
Liberals, Tory-reformers (Communists are not worthy even of his contempt);
he looks down upon his mother, because she has a business mind, his wife,
because she comes from a non-professional county family, his brother,
because although he is a professional officer he does not serve with the
Guards, Hussars, or at least with a county regiment. He adores and admires
his seven-years old son, because the shape of his nose resembles his own. If
naturalized, remember these rules:
1. You must start eating porridge for breakfast and allege that you
like it.
2. Speak English with your former compatriots. Deny that you know any
foreign language (including your mother tongue). The knowledge of foreign
languages is very un-English. A little French is permissible, but only with
an atrocious accent.
3. Revise your library. Get rid of all foreign writers whether in the
original or translated into English. The works of Dostoyevsky should be
replaced by a volume on English Birds; the collected works of Proust by a
book called 'Interior Decoration in the Regency Period'; and Pascal's
Pensees by the 'Life and Thoughts of a Scottish Salmon'.
4. Speaking of your new compatriots, always use the first person
plural.
In this aspect, though, a certain caution is advisable. I know a
naturalized Britisher who, talking to a young man, repeatedly used the
phrase 'We Englishmen.' The young man looked at him, took his pipe out of
his mouth and remarked softly: 'Sorry, Sir, I'm a Welshman,' turned his back
on him and walked away.
The same gentleman was listening to a conversation. It was mentioned
that the Japanese had claimed to have shot down 22 planes.
'What - ours?' he asked indignantly.
His English hostess answered icily:
'No - ours.'
The Land of the Rising Yen
Everyone writes about the tea ceremony in Japan, but who, except George
Mikes, notices the way the rubbish is thrown out? Everyone reports his own
reaction to the Japanese sense of tradition, but who else spots the reaction
of the Japanese to their own sense of tradition?
Whether he is describing morals or manners, George Mikes looks at the
Japanese as he looks at the rest of mankind - with his own inscrutable blend
of curiosity, respect, affection and charm.
Also published
How to be a Brit
How to be a Decadent
How to be a Guru
How to be Poor
How to be a Yank