A SPECTATOR 'S NOTEBOOK
SEVERAL readers—all, I think, Europeans—have written to the Editor reproving me for my use of the epithet " Asiatic " to describe recent Russian conduct in Berlin. I see their point. It is rather rude to all the people who live in Asia to use the adjective in a derogatory sense. But isn't it at least partly their fault that it has acquired this sense ? And what other word—except the equally objectionable " Oriental "—conveys the same meaning ? One lady approved and sent this quotation from a story published in 1891: " Let it be clearly understood that the Russian is a delightful person until he tucks in his shirt. - As an Oriental he is charming. It is only when he insists on being treated as the most easterly of western peoples, instead of the most westerly of easterns, that he becomes a racial anomaly extremely difficult to handle." This (I think) shrewd judgement comes from The Man Who Was,
by Rudyard Kipling.
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