PEOPLE AND THINGS
By HAROLD NICOLSON
T. WONDER sometimes whether extreme efficiency be not I the sign of a second-class mind. For, whereas I myself seldom miss trains, confuse appointments or get my thoughts demonstrably into the wrong order, I observe that those of my friends who possess first-class minds actually wallow in such ineptitudes. I have a feeling that Shakespeare (who cannot have been a tidy man) would not have wasted all the time that Goethe wasted in fussing about optics or in arranging his geological specimens upon shelves. Yet although I recognise this fact with becoming modesty, I am startled sometimes by the inefficiency of the truly gifted. I am startled by the French. I spent last week visiting some of the eastern provinces of France. Once again the wide dignity of that lovely country held me entranced ; once again I was comforted and enthralled by the stolid heroism of the French people ; once again I was encouraged by the muscular lucidity, the actual courage, of the French intelligence ; and once again I was puzzled by the patches of incompetence which distort their symmetry.
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