that the ideal automobile ought to be made entirely by the hand labour
of traditional craftsmen, quite individually, out of beaten copper,
wrought iron and seasoned oak. All this electric-starter business and
this electric lighting outfit I have here, is perfectly hateful to the
English mind.... It isn't that we are simply backward in these things,
we are antagonistic. The British mind has never really tolerated
electricity; at least, not that sort of electricity that runs through
wires. Too slippery and glib for it. Associates it with Italians and
fluency generally, with Volta, Galvani, Marconi and so on. The proper
British electricity is that high-grade useless long-sparking stuff you
get by turning round a glass machine; stuff we used to call frictional
electricity. Keep it in Leyden jars.... At Claverings here they still
refuse to have electric bells. There was a row when the Solomonsons, who
were tenants here for a time, tried to put them in...."

Mr. Direck had followed this cascade of remarks with a patient smile and
a slowly nodding head. "What you say," he said, "forms a very marked
contrast indeed with the sort of thing that goes on in America. This
friend of mine I was speaking of, the one who is connected with an
automobile factory in Toledo--"

"Of course," Mr. Britling burst out again, "even conservatism isn't an
ultimate thing. After all, we and your enterprising friend at Toledo,
are very much the same blood. The conservatism, I mean, isn't racial.
And our earlier energy shows it isn't in the air or in the soil. England
has become unenterprising and sluggish because England has been so
prosperous and comfortable...."

"Exactly," said Mr. Direck. "My friend of whom I was telling you, was a
man named Robinson, which indicates pretty clearly that he was of