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.'