mour--long-drawn
American metaphors at which that most critical audience roared with
laughter. But it was not the kind of thing that they were accustomed
to, and I could fancy what Wake would have said of it. The conviction
grew upon me that Blenkiron was deliberately trying to prove himself an
honest idiot. If so, it was a huge success. He produced on one the
impression of the type of sentimental revolutionary who ruthlessly
knifes his opponent and then weeps and prays over his tomb.

Just at the end he seemed to pull himself together and to try a little
argument. He made a great point of the Austrian socialists going to
Stockholm, going freely and with their Government's assent, from a
country which its critics called an autocracy, while the democratic
western peoples held back. 'I admit I haven't any real water-tight
proof,' he said, 'but I will bet my bottom dollar that the influence
which moved the Austrian Government to allow this embassy of freedom
was the influence of Germany herself. And that is the land from which
the Allied Pharisees draw in their skirts lest their garments be
defiled!'

He sat down amid a good deal of applause, for his audience had not been
bored, though I could see that some of them thought his praise of
Germany a bit steep. It was all right in Biggleswick to prove Britain
in the wrong, but it was a slightly different thing to extol the enemy.
I was puzzled about his last point, for it was not of a piece with the
rest of his discourse, and I was trying to guess at his purpose. The
chairman referred to it in his concluding remarks. 'I am in a
position,' he said, 'to bear out all that the lecturer has said. I can
go further. I can assure him on the best authority that his surmise is
correct, and that Vienna's decision to send delegates to Stockholm was
largely dictated by representations from Berlin. I am given to
understand that the fact has in the last few days been admitted in the
Austrian Press.'

A vote of thanks was carried, and then I found myself shaking hands
with Ivery while Blenkiron stood a yard off, talking to one of the
Misses Weekes. The next moment I was being introduced.

'Mr Brand, very pleased to meet you,' said the voice I knew so well.
'Mr Ivery has been telling me about you, and I guess we've got
something to say to each other. We're both from noo countries, and
we've got to teach the old nations a little horse-sense.'

Mr Ivery's car--the only one left in the neig