<h2> <SPAN name="article35"></SPAN> Round the World and Back </h2>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>I am not sure where we go next. New Zealand, if the holiday
were mine; for I have always believed New Zealand to be the
most beautiful country in the world. Also it is from all
accounts a nice clean country. If I were to arrange a
world-tour for myself, instead of following some other
traveller about in imagination, my course would be settled,
not, in the first place, by questions of climate or scenery
or the larger inhabitants, but by consideration of those
smaller natives--the Tarantula, the Scorpion, and the
Centipede. If I were told that in such-and-such a country one
often found a lion in one’s bath, I might be prepared
to risk it. I should feel that there was always a chance that
the lion might not object to me. But if I heard that one
might find a tarantula in one’s hotel, then that
country would be barred to me for ever. For I should be dead
long before the beast had got to close quarters; dead of
disgust.</p>
<p>This is why South America, which always looks so delightful
on the map, will never see me. I have had to give up most of
Africa, India (though, as I have said, this is a country
which I can spare), the West Indies, and many other places
whose names I have forgotten. In a world limited to
inhabitants with not more than four legs I could travel with
much greater freedom. At present the two great difficulties
in my way are this insect trouble, and (much less serious,
but still more important) the language trouble. You can
understand, then, how it is that, since also it is a
beautiful country, I look so kindly on New Zealand.</p>
<p>But I doubt if I could be happy even in a dozen New Zealands,
each one more beautiful than the last, seeing that it would
mean being away from London for a year. The number of things
which might happen in the year while one was away! The new
plays produced, the literary and political reputations made
and lost, a complete cricket championship fought out; in
one’s over-anxious mind there would never be such a
year as the year which one was missing. My friend may retain
his calm as he hears of our distant doings in Kiplingized
India, but it would never do for me. Even to-day, after a
fortnight in the country, I am beginning to get restless.
Really, I think I ought to get back to-morrow.</p>
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