drinking of beer and sirops in the moonlight under the linden....

Afterwards there had been a periodic sending of postcards and greetings,
which indeed only the war had ended.

Right pleasant people those Germans had been, sun and green-leaf lovers,
for whom "Frisch Auf" seemed the most natural of national cries. Mr.
Britling thought of the individual Germans who had made up the
assembly, of the men's amusingly fierce little hats of green and blue
with an inevitable feather thrust perkily into the hatband behind, of
the kindly plumpnesses behind their turned-up moustaches, of the blonde,
sedentary women, very wise about the comforts of life and very kind to
the children, of their earnest pleasure in landscape and Art and Great
Writers, of their general frequent desire to sing, of their plasticity
under the directing hands of Adam Meyer. He thought of the mellow south
German landscape, rolling away broad and fair, of the little clean
red-roofed townships, the old castles, the big prosperous farms, the
neatly marked pedestrian routes, the hospitable inns, and the artless
abundant Aussichtthurms....

He saw all those memories now through a veil of indescribable
sadness--as of a world lost, gone down like the cities of Lyonesse
beneath deep seas....

Right pleasant people in a sunny land! Yet here pressing relentlessly
upon his mind were the murders of Visé, the massacres of Dinant, the
massacres of Louvain, murder red-handed and horrible upon an inoffensive
people, foully invaded, foully treated; murder done with a sickening
cant of righteousness and racial pretension....