A word for which I have the greatest sympathy is “Cosmopolitan.” I want to see it restored to a respectable use. It is a fine word and it embodies a fine idea. But for more than half the English-speaking people who hear it, I suppose, it carries with it the quality of a shady, illicit individual with a bad complexion, a falsified passport and a police record. This creature to be typical should be mixed up with the drug traffic and a danger to the inexperienced and honest everywhere; Monte Carlo is the idea of heaven for such a Cosmopolitan, and Ellis Island the corresponding hell. I don’t know how it has come about that this good word Cosmopolitan has got so firmly attached to the trunks of such gentry, for the proper term that should be there is surely “extreme individualist.” Even “Internationalist” would be a better word for a man or woman who passes between country and country and belongs to none. But I do not see why we should punish a word because it has been stupidly misapplied. For what is Cosmopolis but the City of the World, and what can a Cosmopolitan be but a good citizen wherever he goes? That is what I want to be and not International--which seems to me an altogether homeless adjective. It means, I take it, “in between nations”--in between the substantial things of life. The only truly international thing is the ocean outside territorial waters. Trying to be International is like trying to walk about on the cracks between the boards, instead of walking on the floor; you could only do it if you had feet like skates, and I cannot understand why we tack this dismal adjective nowadays on to all our current attempts to get human brotherhood put upon a broader basis than parochial or national feeling. I am an Englishman and a Cosmopolitan, a good Englishman, and I hope a good Cosmopolitan; I do not see why I should repudiate my own original plank or any other planks because I want to go freely over all the floor.