Note 3 — Chapter VI · THE DEVIL'S ADVOCATE

It is not quite clear to what incidents the Freiherr is referring. He may be thinking of a certain round-robin which appeared a few days before the war, giving a most handsome academic testimonial of humanity and probity to the German system; or he may have in mind a later manifestation in February last, when there suddenly flighted into the correspondence columns of the Nation a 'gaggle' of university geese, headed appropriately enough by a Professor of Political Economy, by name Pigou, who may be taken as the type of that peculiarly British product, the unemotional sentimentalist. To this 'gaggle' of the heavier fowls there succeeded in due course a 'glory' of poetical and literary finches, twittering the same tune—the obligation on the Allies not to inflict suffering and humiliation on Germany—on Germany, be it remembered, as yet unbeaten, though this was rather slurred over in their spring-song of lovingkindness. The Freiherr, plunged in his heathen darkness, no doubt still believed Germany to be not only unbeaten but victorious, and likely to continue on the same course. He must therefore have been somewhat puzzled by so much tender concern on the part of our professors, etc. for sparing his feelings at the end of the war.