duplicated in a corresponding lack of plain everyday intelligence in
meeting the simplest French requirements.

Indeed, the omissions of Americans are wellnigh incredible. Take the
matter of postage to France. The head of a great French concern made
this statement to me in sober earnestness: "Won't you be good enough to
beg American manufacturers to put their office boys through a course of
instruction in postal rates between Europe and the United States?"

When I asked him the reason he said: "We sometimes get twenty letters
from America in one mail and each comes under a two cent stamp. This has
been going on for years despite our repeated protest about it. Some
months my firm was required to pay from ten to fifteen dollars in excess
postage."

Now the amount of money involved in this transaction is the slightest
feature: it is the chronic laxity and carelessness of the American
business man that gets on the Frenchman's nerve.

Here is another case in point: A well known French firm has been writing
weekly letters for the past eighteen months to a New England factory
trying to persuade the Manager to mark his export cases with a stencil
plate and in ink rather than with a heavy lead pencil, as the latter
marking is almost obliterated by the time the shipment arrives at Havre.
In fact, this French firm went to the extent of sending a stencil and
brush to New England to be used in marking the firm's cases. But the old
pencil habit is too strong and a weekly hunt has to be instituted on the
French docks for odd cases containing valuable consignments of machine
tools. Vexatious delays result. It is just one more nail that the
heedless American manufacturer drives into the coffin of his French