Europe in the Looking Glass by Robert Byron Jan Morris

England or remain north of the Alps for ever.
    The Austrians, however, took a different view. Declining to reduce their books and our passports to confusion, they ridiculed the Italians and their tawdry frontier decorations flapping in the wind a hundred yards up the valley.
    ‘Since they’ve come this side of the mountains they’ve been above themselves,’ they said – Austrian interests having suffered considerably in the Brenner district when the northern frontiers were revised. And so, in revenge for the Great War, the Austrians, with complete irrelevance, plastered their stamps and signatures on the Carnet in the place of the missing Grimsby declaration.
    Much amused we crossed the strip of neutral territory once more. This time the Italians made no attempt to conceal their disgust at our reappearance. For the third time they befouled our passports and their own registers, and with the same official on board we drove down to the customs once again. The officer was not deceived; nor was he amused. He insisted that we must have the English voucher.
    Could we telephone to the embassy at Rome, we asked?
    Certainly; if he received orders from his finance minister to let us through, he would do so. The Embassy could no doubt make the necessary arrangements. Meanwhile, we must move the car back again behind the barrier.
    To this last request David would not accede; and taking Simon, who hates scenes, by the arm, he walked up the road to the chalet , which combined the functions of public house, post-office and barracks, to telephone. I remained in the car.
    A crowd of gesticulating little men gathered round, beseeching, commanding, cursing, whining and growling: the car must be taken back. I explained that I could not drive it. That made no difference. They produced a porter with a dropped lower lip who spoke almost less English than I Italian. The babel continued, until at length, bored, and unable to cope with their torrents of prayer and abuse, I produced my sketch-book, sharpened my pencil with an expensive-looking knife, the property of Simon, and with exasperatingdeliberation proceeded to depict with meticulous care a group of pine trees that sprang from a hillock near the station. This infuriated them and they tried to snatch the book away, with the result that my pencil shot across the sky in a jagged curve that could not even have passed muster as a telegraph wire. My blood boiled in its turn. The porter being the ostensible excuse for using English, I rose to my feet and shouted so that crowds more came running out of the station. I roared that I could not drive the car, and that if I could, I should refuse; that I was not going to fetch my friends; and that I had not come half across Europe in three days to be ordered about by them.
    Without understanding a word they fell back, and David and Simon returned to find me in peaceful possession. The post-mistress was at lunch.
    Our midday meal we had brought with us in a bag. This we now ate in the post-office. Since the drive to Nuremberg, Simon had become wary and had insisted on the hotels supplying us with ham rolls. In spite of them he was miserable, cowed by the officialdom that David and I delighted to defy: he threatened to take the next train that passed through the station, wherever it went. We suggested that he should go to Rome for help. He said that he did not wish to arrive there in flannel trousers. Eventually, despite the assurances of the post-mistress that it was impossible, we got through on the telephone to the capital, but found that the Embassy was shut; it would not be open until five. Our difficulties were considerable, as I knew only a very little Italian, the others none, and the post-mistress equally little German.
    At five we telephoned again, but this time were unable to get through. So, in desperation, we drafted a tear-stained telegraphic appeal to the ambassador, invoking any wife’ s-sister’s -mother-in-law’s-cat connections of