ABSTRACT
In recent years much has been written about the international corporation, but little about the international man. History’s revolving door spins all into its carousel, for even in this less dramatic aspect of human destiny a complete change has taken place. In former eras, epochs or centuries the international man was placed front of stage, with his company in the wings. He was the stuff from which the tales of Kipling, Conrad and Richard Harding Davis were drawn, and Macaulay found literary material in the international man’s role as a displaced person. Finally, the romance of the man abroad filled the pages of many of Somerset Maugham’s sagas. By then we knew the role of the international man: to be our own distant selves, to carry our dreams to the uttermost ends of the earth, there to find confirmation or to crumble under the challenge of the unknown. All this was endowed with the wonder of the readers, we who stayed at home, with our belief in revelation, our willingness to acknowledge the power of the unseen.
