England seems to me the one really soft spot, the rotten spot in the empire. If ever men had to think in world terms, they have to think in world terms today. And here you get an island no bigger than a back garden, chock-full of people who never realise there is anything outside their back garden, pretending to direct the destinies of the World. It is pathetic and ridiculous. And the “superiority” is bathetic to lunacy.

These poor “superior” gentry, all that is left to them is to blame the Americans. It amazes me, the rancour with which English people speak of Americans. Just because the republican eagle of the west doesn’t choose to be a pelican for other people’s convenience. Why should it·

After all, rancour is a bad sign in a superior person. It is a sign of impotence. The superior Englishman feels impotent against the American dollar, so he is wildly rancorous, in private, when America can’t hear him.

Now I am an Englishman. And I know, that if my countrymen still have a soul to sell, they’ll sell it for American dollars, and drive a hard bargain.

Which is what I call being truly superior to the dollar.

This is my own, my native land.

It was such a brave country, for so many years: the old brave, reckless, manly England. Even a man with dyed whiskers, like Palmerston. Too brave and reckless to be treacherous. My England.

Look at us now. Not a man left inside all the millions of pairs of trousers. Not a man left. A host of would-be-amiable cowards shut up each one in his own bubble of conceit, and the whole lot within box after box of safeguards.

One could shout with laughter at the figures inside these endless safety boxes. Except that one is still English, and therefore flabbergasted. My own, my native land just leaves me flabbergasted.