huntsman, like himself.
With proper panoply and flourish, with shouts of Heil and the
roll of drums, with the rattle and slap of a guard of honor from
his Hermann Göring Regiment presenting arms, Göring
opened the International Hunting Exhibition in Berlin in No-
vember . Once again money had been no object, and there
were sections in the spacious galleries devoted to each country,
to the history of hunting, and to the most famous paintings on
this ancient lore.
Britain was well represented. Carl-Maria von Weber’s op-
era about marksmanship, Der Freischütz (The Sharpshooter), was
staged on November as an overture to the exhibition, and
during the intermission Göring walked over to Sir Nevile
Henderson and thanked him for the friendly reception just ac-
corded to his top generals Milch, Stumpff, and Udet during
their recent tour of RAF squadrons and establishments. “It is
inconceivable,” Göring beamed to the ambassador, “that there
should ever be war between men who get on so well together
and respect each other so much as the British and German air-
men.”
The exhibition was a box-office triumph. On some days
forty thousand people thronged the halls, and Göring ordered
the run extended to three weeks. For those three weeks he was in
his element. He besported himself in his baroque hunting cos-
tume, he banqueted as Reich chief huntsman in Berlin Castle on
November , he dined with the world’s leading huntsmen on
the fourth, he presided congenially over the Conseil Interna-
tionale de la Chasse on the fifth.
At : .. that day he mysteriously melted away from
the festivities, to reappear at the Reich Chancellery, in full uni-
form, an hour or two later: Hitler had summoned a secret con-