On February 26 a genial Viennese refugee opened a discussion on this subject. He had recently been released from an Internment Camp where this question had struck him when he heard refugees speak critically of the British. You cannot expect people who have been living pleasantly with their hosts to be pleased when they are suddenly imprisoned. The refugees raged against it, and asked why they had been so treated. Average people who have not been trained to search for objective truth just follow their momentary feelings and passions.
Much of the criticism heard by the speaker related to recent European history. It was asked why Britain was so slow to appreciate approaching danger. The British were said to be slow to grasp anything new. They went on disarming while potential enemies rearmed. There was also criticism of social and private life. The British could not build comfortable houses, with closely fitting doors and windows. They stuck to their cheerful firesides despite the draughts entailed. Refugees had always heard that in regard to hygiene it was a model country, but they had never seen so many dirty and neglected children in Vienna. They were not impressed by the education system. Everybody in the Camp praised the British as individuals in their treatment of them as refugees, and the more thoughtful wondered whether they would have been as kind.
One of the main reasons for these criticisms was that the internees applied the same standards as when they were in Austria. They did not try to adapt themselves in England, although they attempted to do so when they went for their holidays among the country folk of the Tyrol or Carinthia.
The speaker then went on to say that the British were not so bent on doing everything in a logical way as the Germans. For this reason some refugees thought them stupid, but they are not. Germans make the mistake of thinking that because they have been trained to work according to a