Whatever their rule may be to-day about the Prince and matches, as to us
they have come to accept my friend's pertinent distinction: they don't
expect us to keep or even to know their own set of rules.

Indeed, they surpass us in this, they make more allowances for us than we
for them. They don't criticize Americans for not being English. Americans
still constantly do criticize the English for not being Americans. Now,
the measure in which you don't allow for the customs of another country
is the measure of your own provincialism. I have heard some of our own
soldiers express dislike of the English because of their coldness. The
English are not cold; they are silent upon certain matters. But it is all
there. Do you remember that sailor at Zeebrugge carrying the unconscious
body of a comrade to safety, not sure yet if he were alive or dead, and
stroking that comrade's head as he went, saying over and over, "Did you
think I would leave yer?" We are more demonstrative, we spell things out
which it is the way of the English to leave between the lines. But it is
all there! Behind that unconciliating wall of shyness and reserve, beats
and hides the warm, loyal British heart, the most constant heart in the
world.

"It isn't done."

That phrase applies to many things in England besides offering a light to
the Prince, or asking a fellow traveler what those buildings are; and I
think that the Englishman's notion of his right to privacy lies at the
bottom of quite a number of these things. You may lay some of them to
snobbishness, to caste, to shyness, they may have various secondary
origins; but I prefer to cover them all with the broader term, the right
to privacy, because it seems philosophically to account for them and