‘You are an old goose, Walter,’ I said, and I put my arm round
him and kissed the top of his head.
He did not look up. He was looking straight in front of him.
He said:
‘I was thinking before you came in of the Germans who will be
killed; of the German scholars. They are doing work which no
one else has ever done. If German scholarship is stamped out,
scholarship throughout Europe will die. My work is useless, if
the Germans are killed.’