Involuntarily we looked round, seeking for the one to whom the poet's
summons referred.
The general spirit of this Meeting has been called flat in comparison
with that pervading former meetings. It did not strike the younger
participants so. A breath of Scandinavianism swept over every heart; one
felt borne along on a historic stream. It seemed like a bad dream that
the peoples of the North had for so many centuries demolished and laid
waste each other, tapped one another for blood and gold, rendered it
impossible for the North to assert herself and spread her influence in
Europe.
One could feel at the Meeting, though very faintly, that the Swedes and
Norwegians took more actual pleasure in each other, and regarded
themselves as to a greater extent united than either of them looked upon
themselves as united with the Danes, who were outside the political
Union. I was perhaps the only Dane present who fancied I detected this,
but when I mentioned what I thought I observed to a gifted young
Norwegian, so far was he from contradicting me that he merely replied:
"Have you noticed that, too?"
Notwithstanding, during the whole of the Meeting, one constantly heard
expressed on every hand the conviction that if Germany were shortly to
declare war against Denmark--which no one doubted--the Swedes and
Norwegians would most decidedly not leave the Danes in the lurch.
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