If a Frenchman were to label his hostelry an inn or a public house
(probably written publicouse) we should think him a victim of rather
advanced Anglomania. But when an Englishman calls it an hotel,
we feel no special dread of him either as a dangerous foreigner
or a dangerous lunatic. We need not recognise less readily
the value of this because our own distinction is different;
especially as our own distinction is being more distinguished.
The spirit of the English is adventure; and it is the essence of adventure
that the adventurer does remain different from the strange tribes
or strange cities, which he studies because of their strangeness.
He does not become like them, as did some of the Germans,
or persuade them to become like him, as do most of the French.
But whether we like or dislike this French capacity, or merely
appreciate it properly in its place, there can be no doubt
about the cause of that capacity. The cause is in the spirit
that is so often regarded as wildly Utopian and unreal.
The cause is in the abstract creed of equality and citizenship;
in the possession of a political philosophy that appeals to all men.
In truth men have never looked low enough for the success
of the French Revolution. They have assumed that it claims
to be a sort of divine and distant thing, and therefore have
not noticed it in the nearest and most materialistic things.
They have watched its wavering in the senate and never seen it
walking in the streets; though it can be seen in the streets of Cairo
as in the streets of Paris.

In Cairo a man thinks it English to go into a tea-shop;
but he does not think it French to go into a cafe. And the people
who go to the tea-shop, the English officers and officials,
are stamped as English and also stamped as official.