A friend of mine is just going off for his holiday.
He is having a longer holiday than usual this time.
Instead of his customary three weeks, he is having
a year, and he is going to see the world. He
begins with India. Probably some of our Territorials
will wonder why he wants to see India particularly.
They would gladly give him all of it. However,
he is determined to go, and I cannot do less than wish
him luck and a safe return.
There are several places to which I should be glad
to accompany him, but India is not one of them.
Kipling ruined India for me, as I suspect he did for
many other of his readers. I picture India as
full of intriguing, snobbish Anglo-Indians, who are
always damning the Home Government for ruining the
country. It is an odd thing that, although I
have lived between thirty and forty years in England,
nobody believes that I know how to govern England,
and yet the stupidest Anglo-Indian, who claims to
know all about the proper government of India because
he has lived there ten or twenty years, is believed
by quite a number of people to be speaking with authority.
No doubt my friend will have the decisive word in
future in all his arguments on Indian questions with
less travelled acquaintances. But he shall not
get round me.
From India he goes to China, and thither I would follow
him with greater willingness, albeit more tremulously.
I can never get it out of my head that the Chinese
habitually torture the inquiring visitor. Probably
I read the wrong sort of books when I was young.
One of them, I remember, had illustrations. No
doubt they were illustrations of mediaeval implements;
no doubt I am as foolish as the Chinaman would be
who had read about the Tower of London and feared to
disembark at Folkstone; but it is hard to dispel these
early impressions. “Yes, yes,” I
should say rather hastily, as they pointed out the
Great Wall to me, and I should lead the way unostentatiously
but quite definitely towards Japan.
Before deciding how long to stay in Japan, one would
have to ask oneself what one wants from a strange
country. I think that the answer in my case is
“Scenery.” The customs of Japan, or
Thibet, or Utah are interesting, no doubt, but one
can be equally interested in a description of them.
The people of these countries are interesting, but
then I have by no means exhausted my interest in the
people of England, and five minutes or five months
among an entirely new set of people is not going to
help me very much. But a five-second view of
(say) the Victoria Falls is worth acres of canvas or
film on the subject, and as many gallons of ink as
you please. So I shall go to Japan for what I
can see, and (since it is so well worth seeing) remain
there as long as I can.
