ABSTRACT
The average man is not often troubled about foreigners. The Englishman eats the oranges grown by Spaniards, the Frenchman drinks coffee from Brazil or Java; but neither thinks of the foreign peoples whose labour has produced the food he uses, for the commodities of the world are more truly international than are the minds of men. Our clothing, our food and our houses, our railways and our telephones are all international, because the material necessary for making them is contributed by men speaking many different languages and living under many different forms of government: and the internationalism of modern life is not merely material, for the structure of our telephones and even the cut of our clothes is partly due to ideas which have come from abroad. Our medicine and surgery are the results of an interchange of ideas between many nations and no art is so national as to be untouched by foreign influence. The religious, political and social habits we have acquired are due in part to the influence of foreigners; and indeed there is no section of life which is isolated from the action of international interchange.
