smug, tame, sly, dull, mercenary little race of men, they exist by and
for the alien tripper. They are the fine flower of commercial
civilisation, the shining symbol of international comity, and have
never done anybody any harm. I cannot imagine why the King should not
give them the incomparable advertisement of a visit.

Not that they are badly in need of advertisement over here. Every year
the British trippers to Switzerland vastly outnumber the British
trippers to any other land--a fact which shows how little the romantic
imagination tells as against cheapness and comfort of hotels and the
notion that a heart strained by climbing is good for the health. And
this fact does but make our Sovereign's abstention the more
remarkable. Switzerland is not `smart,' but a King is not the figure-
head merely of his entourage: he is the whole nation's figure-head.
Switzerland, alone among nations, is a British institution, and King
Edward ought not to snub her. That we expect him to do so without
protest from us, seems to me a rather grave symptom of flunkeyism.

Fiercely resenting that imputation, you proceed to raise difficulties.
`Who,' you ask, `would there be to receive the King in the name of the
Swiss nation?' I promptly answer, `The President of the Swiss
Republic.' You did not expect that. You had quite forgotten, if indeed
you had ever heard, that there was any such person. For the life of
you, you could not tell me his name. Well, his name is not very widely
known even in Switzerland. A friend of mine, who was there lately,
tells me that he asked one Swiss after another what was the name of
the President, and that they all sought refuge in polite astonishment
at such ignorance, and, when pressed for the name, could only screw up
their eyes, snap their fingers, and feverishly declare that they had
it on the tips of their tongues. This is just as it should be. In an