Is it their discretion, do you think, that closes the lips of the French
when they visit our shores? Not from the French do you hear prompt
aspersions as to our differences from them. They observe that proverb
about being in Rome: they may not be able to do as Rome does, but they do
not inquire why Rome isn't like Paris. If you ask them how they like our
hotels or our trains, they may possibly reply that they prefer their own,
but they will hardly volunteer this opinion. But the American in England
and the Englishman in America go about volunteering opinions. Are the
French more discreet? I believe that they are; but I wonder if there is
not also something else at the bottom of it. You and I will say things
about our cousins to our aunt. Our aunt would not allow outsiders to say
those things. Is it this, the-members-of-the-family principle, which
makes us less discreet than the French? Is it this, too, which leads us
by a seeming paradox to resent criticism more when it comes from England?
I know not how it may be with you; but with me, when I pick up the paper
and read that the Germans are calling us pig-dogs again, I am merely
amused. When I read French or Italian abuse of us, I am sorry, to be
sure; but when some English paper jumps on us, I hate it, even when I
know that what it says isn't true. So here, if I am right in my
members-of-the-family hypothesis, you have the English and ourselves
feeling free to be disagreeable to each other because we are relations,
and yet feeling especially resentful because it's a relation who is being
disagreeable. I merely put the point to you, I lay no dogma down
concerning members of the family; but I am perfectly sure that
discretion is a quality more common to the French than to ourselves or
our relations: I mean something a little more than discretion, I mean
esprit de conduits, for which it is hard to find a translation.

Upon my first two points, the right to privacy and the mother-tongue, I