LE FIVE O'CLOCK
Sm,—After recent experience of the courtesy of Continental hotels, one is abruptly discouraged by the short-sighted bluntness of certain hotel- keepers at home. Recently, with a foreigner and an elderly couple, I asked for tea at 5.20 p.m. in a Trust House at Horsham. We were refused, on the ground that we could not, be trusted to drink a cup of tea within ten Minutes ; a polite manageress was sorry about it, but since tea was not served without food in her hotel, since the waiter would anyway give notice if pressed, and since we were non-resident, there was nothing to be done. A trivial incident of this kind is only worth reporting as the typical example of a widespread habit of mind which not only keeps foreigners out of England but drives the English, for their holidays,
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