VICTIMISED AT FRENCH HOTELS 147 



Pallin, Major H. H. Roberts, Dr Freeman, Tom Castle 

 and various others, and in the early stages we were 

 victimised at the hotels. For example, at a leading 

 hotel, run, it may be, by a syndicate of waiters, we 

 all breakfasted and dined together, and when the time 

 for paying arrived, we were all given bills which, what 

 with the francs and the French figures, were outside the 

 capacity of any one of us to understand. We should 

 have paid without a murmur, but Mr Figes, the starter, 

 happened to come in and chanced to see one of our bills. 

 He spotted the game at once. They were charging 

 each one of us for all the drink that everyone had 

 had. There were profuse apologies and consequent 

 reductions of all the accounts. 



I do not know that English people are more honest 

 than others, but they are less liable, in my experience, 

 to practise dishonesty on a small scale it may be 

 because, before the war, at any rate, they had more 

 money. You would not expect, for example, to be 

 tricked out of change at a reputable English hotel, 

 and yet it was the common routine in France if you 

 paid a sovereign to give you the change for a louis 

 with apologies, of course, if you noted the mistake. 



Once at the H8tel Terasse, Deauville, I had arrived 

 by the morning boat on a Sunday, from Havre, and 

 before going in to breakfast asked the young lady at 

 the office to change me a sovereign into French money. 

 She gave me twenty francs, as per usual, and I said I 

 wanted five more. She said I had given her a louis, 

 but I was able to convince her that this was not so, for 

 I had not a louis in my possession. She grudgingly 

 handed out the five francs and, sticking the whole 

 twenty-five in the ticket pocket of an ulster I was 



