that is to say those who did not
openly laugh at it or, being scaremongers, rabidly approve
it--considered it a great shame and a great pity that the poor old man
should thus victimise those closing years of his life which should have
been spent in that honourable retirement which is the right place for
fussy old people of both sexes and all walks of life.

Sabre, reading the reports of the campaign--two or three lines--could
not but reflect how events were falsifying, and continued to falsify the
predictions of the intense Otway in this regard. Deliciously pleasant
relations with Germany were variously evidenced throughout 1913. The
King and Queen attended in Berlin the wedding of the Kaiser's daughter,
and the popular Press, in picture and paragraph, told the genial British
public what a thoroughly delightful girl the Kaiser's daughter was. The
Kaiser let off loud "Hochs!" of friendly pride, and the Press of the
world responded with warm "Hochs" of admiration and tribute; and the
Kaiser, glowing with generous warmth, celebrated the occasion by
releasing and handsomely pardoning three of those very British "spies"
to whose incarceration in German fortresses (Sabre recalled) the intense
Otway had attached such deep significance. This was a signal for more
mutual "Hochs." Later the Prince of Wales visited Germany and made there
an extended stay of nine weeks; and in June the twenty-fifth anniversary
of the Emperor William's accession was "Hoch'd" throughout the German
Empire and admiringly "Hoch'd" back again from all quarters of the
civilised globe.

It was all splendid and gratifying and deeply comforting. So many
"Hochs!" and such fervent and sincere "Hochs!" never boomed across the
seas of the world, and particularly the North Sea or (nice and friendly
to think) German Ocean, in any year as in the year 1913.

II

Not that relations with Germany counted for anything in the whirl of
intensely agreeable sensations of these excellent days. Their entirely
pleasing trend prevented the scaremongers from interfering with full
enjoyment of the intensely agreeable sensations; otherwise they were,
by comparison with more serious excitements, completely negligible. The
excitements were endless and of every nature. At one moment the British
Public was stirred to its depths in depths not often touched (in 1913)
by reading of Scott's glorious death in the Antarctic; at another it was
unspeakably moved by the disqualification