An American said to me, when I was travelling not long ago, that in America matters such as travelling, living in hotels, etc., had been reduced to perfection. I don’t believe this to be true. What I do think is very often true is that the means has been perfected without any regard having been paid to the end. The Pullman car is an example in point. If you regard the Pullman car as a device for travelling, a machine for holding as many people as possible and economizing the maximum of space in so doing, it is perfect. But as a vehicle for human beings to travel in in comfort it is imperfect. It contains great possibilities for discomfort quite apart from the coloured gentleman, who may or may not make life a hell to you during the journey. What is often left out in the calculations of ingenious devices of means of luxury is the human element, the human being. It is no good having an elevator that goes at a speed of five hundred miles an hour, if it makes you sick. It is no good having a train that goes so fast that you can neither read by day nor sleep by night in it. It is no good having a theatre so large that you cannot hear the actors speak. It is no good having a meal so rich that your appetite has gone after the first course. I remember somebody once saying to me a long time ago that the Americans had attained to luxury by jumping over comfort. I think there is a certain amount of truth in this, and yet it would be foolish to call American hotels uncomfortable. They are not uncomfortable. Only there is this to be said: That to some people all hotel life is uncomfortable. They hate living in a crowd. They hate bustle, confusion, noise, the arrival and departure of people, etc. And there is certainly more hotel life in America than in other countries. And yet what a saving to the nerves, and to the temper, are so many of the devices and the arrangments in American hotels. The telephone, for instance: if you want a nice test of temper, try to get a number at the Hotel Cecil in London; or, better still, spend a happy morning in ringing up people on the telephone in Paris. In America it is either done for you at once or you know it cannot be done, and the matter is settled. Hotel life in America seems to me infinitely better organized than in any other country in the world, with the possible exception of China. Because when you order a room at a Chinese hotel, in a small Chinese town, the room is built for you while you wait; you choose the style of room, and the paper, the carpeting, and all the furniture are put in during the day. Another thing which is an immense saving of time and temper in an American hotel is the way in which it is possible to find out whether or not some friend of yours is staying there, without having to wait the best part of an hour, and without people being sent off in different directions, who come back much later on with contradictory reports. [Illustration: TRYING TO GET A NUMBER AT THE HOTEL CECIL]