My emotional equipment as a faithful son of England I claim to be sound and complete. To the end of my days I shall think of England, the kindly England of the south-east, London and Essex, Kent and Sussex, as my own very particular region of the world. London is mine, as no other city can ever be; I have seen it grow and change and become ever more wonderful and beautiful and dear to me since first I came up to it, to the stupendous gloomy vault of Cannon Street Station, half a century ago. But Paris also, open and elegant, with a delicate excitement in its air; New York, the towering and beautiful; many a prim South German town; Venice; Rome, as I remember it, before reviving prosperity and that vile monument to Victor Emmanuel vulgarised it so hopelessly; frosty and sullen Petersburg, have charmed me, and I want a share in their happiness and welfare, I want to possess them also and to care for them, and I am ready to barter the welcome of my London in exchange. Cosmopolis is all these cities and a thousand others, and I want to be free of them all. But the world is full of stupid people who will not let me be free of Cosmopolis. They make my England almost a gaol for me by inventing a thousand inconveniences if I want to go out of it. There are passport offices and tariff offices stuck across every path of travel and desire; there are differences in coinage and a multitude of petty restrictions to exasperate every attempt I make at holiday in my Europe. The streets of Cosmopolis are up and barricaded; I want to break down these barricades. There is not a reasonable and honest man in the world who does not want a uniform coinage about the earth. Only the greedy, cunning exchange speculator--and idiot collectors--want either varied coinages or a variety of stamps in this world. If the League of Nations at Geneva wasn’t the dismallest sham on the earth, it would insist upon running the posts of Europe and having a mint of its own. Wherever one goes in Europe one finds oneself loaded up with foreign money that ceases to be current after a day’s journey, and with useless postage stamps. And every silly little scrap of Europe is pretending to be a separate economic system--in mysterious conflict with other economic systems. Every hundred miles or so in Europe there is a fresh tariff barrier.