A Tragedy of Twopence - Page 2

can argue about abstract things in a foreign language who has
ever got as far as Exercise IV. in a primer. For as soon as he can
put a sentence together at all he finds that the words used in abstract
or philosophical discussions are almost the same in all nations.
They are the same, for the simple reason that they all come
from the things that were the roots of our common civilisation.
From Christianity, from the Roman Empire, from the mediaeval Church,
or the French Revolution. "Nation," "citizen," "religion," "philosophy,"
"authority," "the Republic," words like these are nearly the same
in all the countries in which we travel. Restrain, therefore,
your exuberant admiration for the young man who can argue with six
French atheists when he first lands at Dieppe. Even I can do that.
But very likely the same young man does not know the French for a
shoe-horn. But to this generalisation there are three great exceptions.
(1) In the case of countries that are not European at all, and have
never had our civic conceptions, or the old Latin scholarship.
I do not pretend that the Patagonian phrase for "citizenship"
at once leaps to the mind, or that a Dyak's word for "the Republic"
has been familiar to me from the nursery. (2) In the case of Germany,
where, although the principle does apply to many words such as "nation"
and "philosophy," it does not apply so generally, because Germany
has had a special and deliberate policy of encouraging the purely
German part of its language. (3) In the case where one does not know
any of the language at all, as is generally the case with me.

. . . . .

Such at least was my situation on the dark day on which I committed
my crime. Two of the exceptional conditions which I have mentioned
were combined. I was walking about a German town, and I knew no German.
I knew, however, two or three of those great and solemn words which
hold our European civilisation together--one of which is "cigar."
As it was a hot and dreamy day, I sat down at a table in a sort
of beer-garden, and ordered a cigar and a pot of lager. I drank the
lager, and paid for it. I smoked the cigar, forgot to pay for it,
and walked away, gazing rapturously at the royal outline of the
Taunus mountains. After about ten minutes, I suddenly remembered
that I had not paid for the cigar. I went back to the place of
refreshment, and put down the money. But the proprietor also had
forgotten the cigar, and he merely said guttural things in a tone
of query, asking me, I suppose, what I wanted. I said "cigar," and
he gave me a cigar. I endeavoured while putting down the money to
wave away the cigar with