FOREIGN OBSTACLES
By C. M. WOODHOUSE YEARS ago it could be taken for granted in England that all foreigners were either villainous or funny, but this view is now seen to have been exaggerated. What has become more apparent to the English, as their horizons were widened by the First World War, the Second World War and the current world peace, is another characteristic of foreigners : their obstinacy. ' The foreigners we liberated three or four years ago `showed a perfectly astounding equally, though no doubt more reasonably, resisted the temptation to develop into passable imitations of the American. This behaviour must certainly be attributed to obstinaby rather than stupidity. Any- one who has had anything to do with foreigners in the mass will agree about that.
The first encounter between English good sense and foreign obstinacy is always a depressing experience, especially for the English- man. None is so blind as he who will not see, or so clueless as he who persistently throws away the clues offered to him. This is not a lesson which the long-suffering Englishman can learn in a moment ; it creeps over him gradually as one blow succeeds another, until finally the crucial experience reveals to him what he has actually, been learning for a long time. The experience is no doubt always much the same ; and although my own lesson was learned in Greece, it might just as well have been anywhere else.
It happened in the Greek mountains in the winter of 1943-44, when the snow lay deep in the passes, still slightly discoloured by the by-products of Vesuvius's distant eruption. I had to cross the Pindus range from the East of Greece to the West, on a mission of restoring peace between the warring guerrillas, with a small party of men and mules. The distance was not great on the map, but the intervening ground was what the Greeks would call " anomalous," and we would call an 8,000-foot range of mountains: We had the
choice of either climbing 6,000 feet to the nearest pass, or making
a detour of five days' journey at a lower level, and time was short. Naturally, being English (with the exception of one American whose point of view was for practical purposes the same), we decided on the short and steep route ; it was axiomatic that, wherever there was a choice of routes, ours must be the one that went uphill.
Just as naturally our Greek guides recommended the long way round. They could see no reason to hurry, their counter-axiom being never to put off till tomorrow what could be put off till next week.
It was obvious from the start that they wanted us to fail. The crisis came in the last village below the pass; where the whole population gathered imthe square to dissuade us. They said it was impossible to cross the saddle in February, impossible. We asked why. They said no one ever had. We pointed out that inductive generalisations based entirely on negative instances were notoriously unreliable. They shrugged, and one of them spat. We asked how they knew it was impossible if no one had ever tried. They said that their fathers and grandfathers had told them. We pointed out that their fathers had been told by their grandfathers and their grand- fathers by their great-grandfathers. Obviously, no one had ever had it except on someone else's authority. It was high time someone tried, and we intended to.
Then they changed their tactics and pretended to be intensely practical. They said that the snow would be fifteen feet deep, and there would be nothing to distinguish paths from precipices. The
mules' legs would sink in the drifts and they would never find a foothold. 1g we must go, what we needed to carry our equipment was not mules but women ; they would be much more practical, because they would have their arms free to lever the }selves out of the drifts. Besides, they said, proportionately women could carry more ; for instance, the charging-engine for our wireless-batteries was too heavy for a mule, because a pack-saddle had to have an equal weight on both sides, so that its totAlpad would have to be equal to two charging- engines. Two would be too much for a mule, but one was not too much for a woman's back, which did not suffer from the same disadvantage. We asked contemptuously why women would be better than men, and they replied that women were stronger, having one more rib than men, for reasons stated in the Book of Genesis. We almost shrugged and spat, but remembered in time that we were English.
We changed the subject. In order to calculate the time required, as well as to impress on them our determination, we asked how long the journey would take in summer. They replied in their obstinate way that it was not summer but winter, so the question did not arise. With praiseworthy patience we insisted that we simply wanted to know as a matter of academic interest. Then one of them said ten hours and another said eight ; a third said it was nine hours, butiaiF should take twelve ; all agreed that it depended how fast you walka: but, of course, as it w,as winter and not summer. . . . And so it went on. They could hardly believe their eyes when we actually started up the slope from the village. They looked at us as if the only thing missing was a banner with a strange device. We waved good-bye confidently, but without scorn. They shrugged, and one of them spat again. But the mules set an encouraging pace, and we had soon left the village out of,.sight, far below.
It must have been about three hours later that We arrived back in the village. An unforeseeable series of accidents had driven us back when we were in sight of the saddle. It started when one of us fell over a precipice, though not seriously because there was a snow-drift in the way. Unfortunately a mule fell after him, slipping sideways over the edge into the drift, so that its near hooves were anchored on firm ground while its off hooves beat about in the loose snow. Naturally its load slipped off in the same direction. We never recovered the load, but after twenty minutes' work we managed to hoist the mule back on to the path. Then it refused to budge ; even mules seem to share the national obstinacy of foreigners.- Of course, we could not get the other mules past it without pushing it over the edge again ; and that was vetoed by its owner, who was one of our guides. So we tried pulling it along by the reins. That was slow but sure, until its back legs went through the snow into a concealed gully, where running water had treacherously undermined the drift. This time it was only possible to get it up facing the wrong direction ; and then, of course, it headed for home. A most unfor- tunate confusion follbwed, which the muleteers aggravated, perhaps deliberately, by a most un-English display of excitability. There is no point in wasting time on the details ; the upshot was that we had no alternative but to turn back, and this when we were actually in sight of the saddle only a few hundred feet above.
What was particularly infuriating was.that the crowd in the village square appeared not even to have dispersed in the meantime. They were waiting for us in exactly the same group as when we had left them. Several of diem perceptibly shrugged. It was not worth explaining the real reason why we had had to turn back ; we were too tired to argue. So it is quite probable that they still believe the saddle to be impassable in winter. Such is the incurable obstinacy which makes foreigners so difficult to deal with.
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