[26] I am told that a similar herd-hallucination overtook Paris in the war of 1870. A rumour that the Crown Prince's army had been surrounded and that the news was posted at the Hôtel de Ville brought the inhabitants by thousands into the streets till those who were pressed against the Hôtel de Ville and those who were farthest away alike maintained that they had read the official report. [27] Generosity and war seem incompatible! _Wellington._ It's Marshal Ney himself who heads the charge. The finest cavalry commander, he, That wears a foreign plume; ay, probably The whole world through! _Spirit Ironic._ And when that matchless chief Sentenced shall lie to ignominious death But technically deserved, no finger he Who speaks will lift to save him! _Spirit of the Pities._ To his shame. We must discount war's generous impulses I sadly see. THOMAS HARDY: _The Dynasts_. [28] I remained at Westminster a year, judging that period to be as long as I could support the daily risk of detection by pupils or colleagues. Sometimes--now that it is all over--I blush to think of the subjects that I essayed to teach; and sometimes I blush to recall the lessons that I actually taught. Since leaving, I have seen my year's work passed in more candid review than was possible at the time and have been honoured with a place in the repertory of imitations in which Westminsters love to indulge whenever two or three are gathered together. If one or two of my least promising pupils pay me the compliment of saying that I taught them at least something, one or two of the most promising now ask me how it was that I never discovered them cribbing in form or thrusting strange gifts down the necks of their neighbours. Our warfare was waged with good humour for the most part, though only a schoolmaster knows how highly his sense of justice may be tested in dealing with some one who is personally antagonistic to him. With many I am proud to say that I made lasting friendships: during the later years of the war I received letters from every front and my old pupils came to see me when they were on leave; since the war they write from Africa and America, I meet them in London and Oxford, we abandon ourselves to school "shop", and they embarrass me by occasionally addressing me as "sir". To my friends of the Modern Transitus from Play Term, 1914, to Election Term, 1915, to the Classical Transitus, the Modern Sixth, the Mathematical Sixth, the History Sixth and the Seventh, wherever you may be, I send greeting; my injustice was unintentional, my incompetence incurable; I should be well pleased to think that your memories of me are a hundredth part as kindly as my memories of you. For perhaps the first three cautious days you were a little awed by me: