ONE RAINY EVENING THIRTY YEARS AGO I WAS HONOURED BY THE VISIT OF A DAMP EMPLOYEE OF THE STATE OF VIRGINIA. He was getting old and he huffed and puffed as he walked up the three flights to our small apartment in Richmond. Unknown to his superiors he was a genius. He had graduated with honours from the University and was a walking encyclopaedia of everything and everyone past and present.
We sat drinking coffee before the warm radiator and he told me a fascinating story. One that I had never heard before and one that I have not been able to find reference to since.
It’s the type of story one relegates to the land of wishful thinking except that I knew the narrator. He was most exact in choosing his words. And, too, it’s the type of story the Establishment loves to black out of Saxon histories.
I’m telling the story as I remember it. I have forgotten the exact names of the “orders” he mentioned, and doubtless many of the lesser details, but the story in the main is as it was told to me on that rainy night.
FEAST OF ORDERS
Before World War I, a great banquet was held once a year in Germany. It was called the “Feast Of Orders”. The Kaiser himself presided. Before him dined the elite of Germany.