the Tsar at Reval, his subjects seemed to think that he had fulfilled
the last demand on his civility. That was in the days of Abdul Hamid.
None of us wished the King to visit Turkey. Turkey is not
internationally powerful, nor had Abdul any Guelph blood in him; and
so we were able to assert, by ignoring her and him, our
humanitarianism and passion for liberty, quite safely, quite politely.
Now that Abdul is deposed from `his infernal throne,' it is taken as a
matter of course that the King will visit his successor. Well, let His
Majesty betake himself and his tact and a full cargo of Victorian
Orders to Constantinople, by all means. But, on the way, nestling in
the very heart of Europe, perfectly civilised and strifeless, jewelled
all over with freedom, is another country which he has not visited
since his accession--a country which, oddly enough, none but I seems
to expect him to visit. Why, I ask, should Switzerland be cold-
shouldered?

I admit she does not appeal to the romantic imagination. She never
has, as a nation, counted for anything. Physically soaring out of
sight, morally and intellectually she has lain low and said nothing.
Not one idea, not one deed, has she to her credit. All that is worth
knowing of her history can be set forth without compression in a few
lines of a guide-book. Her one and only hero--William Tell--never, as
we now know, existed. He has been proved to be a myth. Also, he is the
one and only myth that Switzerland has managed to create. He exhausted
her poor little stock of imagination. Living as pigmies among the
blind excesses of Nature, living on sufferance there, animalculae, her
sons have been overwhelmed from the outset, have had no chance
whatsoever of development. Even if they had a language of their own,
they would have no literature. Not one painter, not one musician, have
they produced; only couriers, guides, waiters, and other parasites. A