CHAPTER XXIXSOME MORE SECRET HISTORYDeluding Rathenau—Callous Experiments—What Lord Palmerston Said—The Kaiser's Aims"What is this I hear?" demanded the War Lord, having scantily acknowledged Herr Krupp von Bohlen's low obeisance. "I want you to understand once and for all that your wife is my ward, and that any offence to her spells disrespect to Majesty."The Overlord of the Krupp works was confused with surprise. He attempted to make answer, but did not get further than a formal: "May it please Your Majesty.""I have no further commands for you at the moment," he was cut short. "Wait in the Adjutant's room until called.""A.E.G.," cried Wilhelm to the adjutant of the House Marshal's office, opening the door for Krupp."My dear Rathenau," he said, when an old man, stout and stockily built, with a philanthropic chin and a complexion denoting indifferent health, walked in. "My dear Rathenau, being credited with seeing ahead, perhaps you'll tell me what this means?" And he pointed to half a dozen entries topping his daily calendar."Asafoetida," read the electrical end of the Jewish triumvirate of self-made men—Ballin, Thyssen, Rathenau. "Does Majesty want me to create a corner in the reverse of eau de Cologne?""Yes and no," said Wilhelm. "But like Ziethen did before Frederick, sit down. And so you may not fall asleep like the great cavalry leader when visiting the king in his old age, I will tell you a story."He retailed the yarn about the meeting between Franz Ferdinand and Cardinal Schlauch, the Secret Service man in the bed, and what No. 103 wished he had placed under the bed before the interview."It gave me an idea," he continued, "an idea, I confess, strengthened at Essen. Why not bottle the noxious gases set free in the furnaces, and let them loose on the enemy?""What, kill them wholesale?" cried Rathenau, moving uneasily in his chair. Philanthropy is one of his hobbies, and underhanded methods go against his grain. The War Lord knows this, and clapped the silencer on his savage bluntness."Kill them? No. Wholesale? No, too. There is to be no gale of these gases—just a breeze to knock out, or knock over, offensive or defensive. I figure this way: Maybe the enemy, entrenched, has to be dislodged at any price to gain some given point. We can't get at them with the ordinary style of weapon; they won't come out even to be hand-grenaded. In such cases, I hold it good strategy to smoke them out.""Asphyxiating gas," mumbled Rathenau half to himself."A good name—something suspending animation—suspending it while we take the coveted place. We won't lose a man, and the enemy is mulcted out of prisoners only, for all placedhors de combatby our chemicals will be cared for by the Red Cross.""Majesty does not intend to have the gases absolutely poisonous?" inquired Rathenau."Now, would I have asked you, whose humanity all Berlin admires, if I did?" cried the War Lord; "if I was signing death warrants, I would not have applied to you, but to Krupp. He is a natural born butcher, I tell you. Krupp devises means to destroy life with the gusto of an American barkeeper mixing cocktails. They blamed Nero for saying he wished the Roman people had but one head that he might knock it off. You should see Krupp gloat over my new howitzers.""And those noxious gases, the workings of which Your Majesty observed at Essen, do not inflict permanent injury?""In the majority of cases black coffee suffices to make the men fit for work again; in a minor number of cases mild palliatives are required. I advised free distribution of milk for those suffering from a weak stomach. Hypodermic injections are resorted to once or twice a week. So you see our 'gassing' will be quite harmless."When the President and Owner of the "A.E.G." (German for General Electric Company) still refused to wax enthusiastic, the War Lord tried a new tag. "It's the charitableness—I almost said the Christianity—of the thing that mainly attracts me," he lied. "You remember Valentina's husband inThe Huguenots. He was murdered during St. Bartholomew's night, at the side of my ancestor, Admiral Coligny. The Comte de Nevars had been asked a little while before to join in the massacre of the Protestants, but refused, pleading that his family contained a long list of warriors, but not a single assassin. So am I trying to curtail killing by the proposed new method of attack. Prisoners, yes; the more the merrier; but deaths and wounds as few as possible.""Hydrochlorine, with the accent on the hydro, might possibly serve Your Majesty," said Rathenau, after thinking hard for a few seconds."Very well, write it down," ordered the War Lord. "Besides Krupp, who can furnish this chemical?""The Ruhr Chemical Works and the Ludwigshafen Aniline Factory might."Rathenau was dismissed with scant thanks, and Krupp was readmitted to listen to the substance of Wilhelm's conference with the President of the A.E.G., the latter's philanthropic objections being carefully marked as the War Lord's own, while the diluting advised was dismissed as namby-pamby.Krupp, after listening respectfully, said: "May it please Your Majesty, I have had a little experience with asphyxiating gas. We used it to destroy a number of consumptive cows, thinking it the more humane method. They were to be benumbed before slaughter."God forbid that Bertha, who is very much attached to the animals on the estate, ever learns what really did happen. As for myself, I had an inkling, but where experience is to be gained charity must take a back seat.""Well said," commented the War Lord. "Go on!""We tethered the cattle in an enclosure, their heads over a furrow from which the poison gas was rising. It had a sharp, bitter smell, and as it caught the animals' throat they gasped and choked. Some attempted to breathe deeply and could not, and all went giddy, it seemed, but did not lose consciousness."The chief vet. had predicted that the intense irritation of the bronchial mucous membrane would fill the tubes with a fluid which the animals could not expel, and this is what did happen."We let them suffer for experience's sake, then gave them salted water. This cleared their lungs and forestalled complete suffocation.""You have gathered the technical information from the medical report?" asked the War Lord."Partly from that, partly from observation," replied Krupp. "When the vets. stated that the animals were on the point of slow suffocation—drowning, we killed them by the quicker method. But one cow was allowed to die by poison gas, to give necessary clues to the medical men. They stated, after investigation, that the gas had had a corrosive action, destroying the mucosa.""Very interesting," said the War Lord, who had seemingly forgotten about his pretended motives of philanthropy. "Your chief vet. shall report in full to my Ministry of Cult. I shall order that from now on condemned animals shall be delivered to the concerns manufacturing this kind of gas for scientific experiments."The red disc on the War Lord's desk went up. Wilhelm looked at the clock. "Delbrueck." Then, turning to Krupp: "You shall wait and hear what he has to say."The successor of Professor Treitschke was bringing the War Lord an essay on "Germany as the Land of the Chosen People," a sort of theological-political tract, suggested by Wilhelm and partly formulated by Court Chaplain Dryander. Its present form had been decided on by Professors Harnack, Schiemann, Meyer and the editor of the Prussian Annals (Preussische Jahrbuecher Magazin)."Typed," said the War Lord approvingly. "I wish you would instil that modern idea into those of your colleagues, who annoy me by their handwriting. The worse it is, the more scientific they deem it. I will read it presently. Now tell Krupp how you view the situation with regard to England.""The United Kingdom they call it," sneered Delbrueck, the most loquacious of "that damned band of professors," to quote Palmerston. "Well, there will be one less in the quartette when war comes—Ireland. The Green Isle will join us when the first shot is fired by a German battery. Further, there is every reason to believe that the title of Emperor of India will be as obsolete as that of King of Jerusalem before hostilities are under way a month, while New Zealand, Australia, South Africa and Canada will certainly not miss the chance for gaining independence."Herr Krupp looked at His Majesty in quite bewildered fashion. Evidently he had not reckoned on such far-reaching eventualities, but the War Lord had."Miss their chance for independence? Not likely! Go on, Delbrueck. Tell him about the Boers.""I needn't assure you, Herr Krupp, on which side the defeated of 1901 will fight. It is self-evident," said Delbrueck."And Egypt?" ventured Herr Krupp, to show his patriotism."German industry and discipline shall fructify the land of the Pharaohs like the Nile itself. We will drive out the English of course," cried the War Lord."The arming of India will be a tremendous task," he continued. "As you know, I am sending the Crown Prince to India, and the military experts accompanying him will furnish all missing links.""May I suggest that His Imperial Highness sound the Indian Princes," interpolated Professor Delbrueck."All that is provided for," retorted the War Lord.But Delbrueck would not be discouraged in his optimisms. "In addition," he went on, "Krupp guns will bark forth the declaration of independence by South Africa, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and the rest of the British dominions, territories and Island Kingdoms. Quite an undertaking, eh?"At this point the War Lord came to Delbrueck's relief. "Finally there is that beggar Turkey. You mustn't be hard on Abdul Hamid, Krupp. Bad pay, of course, but he never hesitates about pulling chestnuts out of the fire for me, and I like him. Besides, since we pay China a subsidy of a million per year for getting ready to wallop Nicholas, why not treat Constantinople with liberality?"Krupp bowed and promised to talk the matter over with his board of directors, but the War Lord scarcely listened. He had deigned to express a wish—woe to the person, or persons, not interpreting the wish as an All Highest command.He turned to the professor. "Delbrueck," he said, "I had a letter from Francis Joseph. He has set his heart on Bosnia, and wants me to support him. Is there any way of arguing with Russia from the historic point of view?""I will look into the matter for Your Majesty at once.""Very well. If you do not succeed, Russia will get a glimpse of my shining armour, which is the best argument, after all.""Now you know my friends, official and otherwise," concluded Wilhelm, again addressing Krupp; "about my aims I have talked to you before. Always bear in mind that I am German Emperor—an expansive title relating to all lands and peoples of the Germanic family, no matter what name they may go under."We must have German Holland and German Belgium, German Tyrol and German Switzerland, and, of course, German Austria. As you know, I have a good title to the whole of North-Eastern France, too, but I will waive that for the Continental Channel coast.""Your Majesty must have Trieste," said Delbrueck."I must have and mean to have all the naval outlets and outposts necessary to German trade and my protection," said Wilhelm in most Olympian style.CHAPTER XXXBROWBEATING THE WAR LADYA Letter from Count Metternich—Scaring the Kaiser—Bertha Offends the War Lord—Using the Secret Code—For "The Day"—An Awful Oath—The Kaiser Wins"I can almost forgive Metternich for allowing himself to be bested by Sir Frank, for that last yarn he sent me is not to be sneezed at. Bertha and Krupp are on the point of a momentous quarrel. Some pacifist idiot—a woman, probably—put a plea in her ear about 'trade in murder,' 'profit in man-killing,' and that sort of thing, and the baby did the rest."She sits on the Huegel, befouling the machinery for conquest-making below her windows."'Some of the ordnance we are sending to China to-day may kill my unborn child,'" she writes, "and things have come to such a pass that Krupp had to instruct the coachman to avoid certain roads where Bertha's carriage might meet with ammunition and other transports."And ever since, all day long and half the night, she accuses Krupp of using her money to forge guns and bullets that, by and by, may seek the heart or limbs of his own son."'Don't I know when war will break out?' he retorted angrily the other day. 'Long before that our boy will be on a journey round the world.' Think of a Prussian officer forced to indulge in such damnable stuff!" cried the War Lord."I submit, Your Majesty, that one has to temporise with women, especially with a young mother," suggested Prince Bülow."Silly sentimentalities," sneered the War Lord; "I want none of them. Bertha has to be broken of her freak—broken," he repeated, gritting his teeth. "Why," he continued, "she even refuses to take joy in her charities now, because, she says, 'money made out of armaments is tainted and no good can come from it.'"If I allow that sort of thing to go on there will be aKladderadatsch" (fataldénouement), "one fine day. She may attempt to wrest from Krupp the power of attorney under which he acts as my agent, and there is such an abomination as divorce, you know—oh,mille pardons, you do know. And, worse luck, my courts deal in it as well as the Vatican." (The War Lord referred to Princess Bülow, whose first marriage to Count von Donhoff was dissolved by the Holy See in 1881.)Bülow reddened under the insult. "I am wholly unsuited to interfere in other people's family affairs," he blurted. Then, frightened at losing his temper, added: "I beg Your Majesty's pardon.""My ward's affairs are my own," declared the War Lord haughtily. "I'll settle with Bertha myself, make her eat out of my hand—take my word for it—and this will help."He showed the Chancellor a long, handwritten letter, with the imprint of Carlton House Terrace, marked "Private and Confidential," and asked him to read it aloud. The address was that of the German Embassy at the Court of St. James's, and Count Wolff von Metternich, His Majesty's Ambassador, was the correspondent. He had been permanently in London since 1901, previously serving his diplomatic apprenticeship there, off and on, between 1885 and 1890. His naïve complaint in the Joseph Chamberlain affair has been noted. As he was the War Lord's confidant while in the service of the Berlin Foreign Office, Count Metternich could not have been altogether without knowledge of Wilhelm's treacherous conduct in and toward England. The War Lord claimed British hospitality time and again to combine espionage with all too successful attempts to hoodwink the English Sovereign and his statesmen about his real intention toward Great Britain. King Edward was not too blind, though, to what was going on; he is credited with the remark that the War Lord was not a gentleman."Important, if true," said Prince Bülow, handing back the letter."Just as important if itisn'ttrue—for my purposes," quoth Wilhelm. He walked up and down the room for several minutes, mumbling things, then suddenly confronted the Chancellor: "A belated answer to my letter to Tweedmouth—can it be that?"Prince Bülow was surprised beyond words. The War Lord referring to his clumsy attempt (in the early part of the year 1908) to throw dust in the eyes of a British Minister of State in regard to his responsibilities, by an act of unprecedented condescension!Wilhelm's personal letter to the First Sea Lord had caused considerable excitement in Germany, but there had been no discussion of it at the Chancellery. The subject was too ticklish for that—particularly its aftermath, with its references to "foolish stratagems," "unintelligent attempt to deceive," "refusal to be perturbed by such little incidents," and last, but not least, England's avowed determination to thwart Wilhelm's plans to be supreme upon the sea, since "there is nothing for Great Britain between foreign sea supremacy and ruin."And those "wretchedTempsarticles" (Majesty's description was stronger), admonishing England not to put faith in the War Lord's protestations, but strengthen her navy and double her army.The War Lord seemed to divine what was going through his Chancellor's mind. He changed the subject. "Edward and Nicki have been talking it over; they are afraid of me, despite boasted Anglo-Russian and Anglo-French propositions, and want to give me a good scare!" he cried. "But I will show them that I don't care a fig for their Entente. The Mediterranean trip is off. My purple standard shall fly at Cowes, and Wedell shall arrange for a little trip into France. Yes, France," he insisted. "I have long wished for a view of the strategical passes of the Vosges, and you must persuade Fallières to invite me to see theSchlucht.[#] Less than an hour's motor trip from the frontier, you know."[#] The proposed motor tour across the French frontier was actually "arranged," as suggested by the War Lord, and was billed to come off in the first or second week of September (1908). However, at the last moment the War Lord showed the white feather, having been informed that he would never leave French soil alive, a number of patriots having vowed to kill him. Previous to this there had been much irritation in France and talk of "impudence," "cynicism," and "espionage.""I will leave no stone unturned to execute Your Majesty's commands," said Prince Bülow, indulging in a profound bow to hide his face and avoid betraying an astonishment bordering on perplexity."Wonder if Edward can be persuaded to meet me in the Solent," mused the War Lord. "I would love to tell him about my trip to Heligoland, our coastal defences there, and preparations for aerial invasion. Of course, the details will be Greek to Uncle, since he knows less of military matters than my two-year-old fillies at Trakehnen, but my tale may possibly induce him to be more careful in matters of hisamours impropre: Russia and France. Don't you think so, Bülow?""The Quadruple Alliance, Your Majesty? I can only repeat the conviction previously expressed—that it is entirely pacific, a defensive measure absolutely. As to King Edward, his political strategy is certainly superior to his military talents, but I was under the impression that he introduced Your Majesty to the Maxim gun.""He happened to be my guest on the day set for the trial of that incomparable man-killer, and I took him to Lichterfelde to show him how I would annihilate his vest-pocket army if he wasn't as careful as his Mamma. Strange to say, he seemed to be quiteau fait. I had bet Moltke a dozenEchtethat Uncle couldn't distinguish a Nordenfeldt or Gardner from the old-time Gatling; but he did. 'Confound your impudence,' I said to Moltke, when I paid the price; but Helmuth convinced me that I got off dirt cheap. The Maxim gun, he persuaded me, must have undreamt of possibilities if even Edward recognises its importance as a war machine."So the emptyechte-box taught me that every copper invested in Maxim guns means one dead—an enemy—hence, that I can't have enough Maxims. I want fifty, no, a hundred thousand."Wilhelm smiled sardonically as he added: "I told Krupp he would lose his job unless he improves on Maxim and gets up a machine-gun as light as our army rifle and as easily fired. But that reminds me. I will go to Essen to-night to impress Bertha with her patriotic duties. You'll keep Krupp here.""Frau Krupp," said Wilhelm, as he retired with the War Lady to the library of Villa Huegel."Bertha," she pleaded."Bertha is treating her Uncle Majesty very badly.""May it please Your Majesty to say in which way I have offended?""In every way, in the surest way, in the most traitorous way!" cried the War Lord, trying to stab the floor with the point of his sheathed sword—a pitiable sight, since his poor left hand was powerless to move. "You are thinking of diverting the works from their sacred purpose: The Fatherland's defence."Wilhelm struck a sentimental pose. "That's my reward for the love and care I bestowed on Frederick's child," he half monologued. "I educated her, exalted her above all women in her station of life, treated her like a child of my own, like my own sons and daughter. I have bestowed as much thought on Essen as on my army and navy; made her business and fortune the grandest of their kind; selected for her loving husband a man of surpassing capacities and gave her wedding theéclatof a royal function. Emperors, sultans and kings have bedizened her with courtesies and high decorations for my sake—the legend of 'the richest girl' has melted into 'the happiest woman in the world'—semper fidelis, and Madame, satiated and ungrateful, turns me the cold shoulder.""Oh, Uncle Majesty, how can you say such things?""Bertha," cried the War Lord, laying his hand on her knee, "if you were not Frederick's daughter, were not rich beyond the dreams of avarice, I would ask: How much—how much did England pay you for deserting me and the Fatherland?"Frau Krupp slipped from the chair, and on her knees implored her terrifying visitor to show mercy."The King of Prussia never pardons traitors."The word awakened Frau Krupp's self-respect. "Traitor!" she cried; "I would be a traitor to humanity if I continued making faggots to set the world afire."The War Lord broke into wild laughter. "So that's the melody," he shouted, "echoes of the gutter Press in London, Paris, Petersburg, Tokyo! It's well you mentioned it, Frau Krupp; I know now exactly how we stand, you and I, the benefactor and the unworthy object of my magnanimity."Bertha lay on the silken rug sobbing her heart out, but for Wilhelm the quivering form of the girl for whom he professed a father's love was mere air.Sitting down at the great desk, he shouted: "I command" into the speaking-tube sacred to his All Highest person, and, Adjutant Baron Dommes responding, he ordered: "Prepare for a confidential message to the Chancellor by secret code. Have the line cleared. You will attend to the wire in person."He grabbed a block of paper and began to write, tearing off sheet after sheet with partially finished sentences, rejecting his own words as fast as he wrote them, and talking to himself in tones considerably above a stage whisper."Would suit the Austrian Baroness to turn Krupps into an ironmongery for household and farm goods," he sneered savagely, "but the mollycoddles shall know presently that they haven't got a silly girl to deal with." He paused, giving a furtive look to the prostrate Bertha; then began scribbling again and reading his hasty scrawl to himself:"Bethmann-Hollweg shall consult with Kuentzel and Harnier about condemnation proceedings against—— Never mind, I will give names by 'phone after receipt of message is acknowledged. Must be kept a profound State secret. Anyone mentioning it even in the presence of his secretary will be dismissedcum infamia. Remember, the best legal talent only." (The persons named were high officials in the Ministry of Justice.)Excitement would not let Wilhelm be seated long, and he began pacing the floor, dragging his sword."Preposterous!" he alternately mumbled or hissed. "A mere slut foiling my plans, interfering with my life's work! Stop making implements of war: the great Alexander held up on the road to India by a blacksmith!" He laughed hysterically, lunging forth to both sides with his clenched fist as if striking at imaginary enemies."But the maw of death will be glutted with or without your assistance, Frau Krupp—glutted to nausea!" he cried, pausing before the trembling girl. "There will be an accumulation of anguish such as the world has never witnessed, despite thee, ingrate that thou art."The War Lady raised her hand and looked at him with ghastly, tear-stained eyes."Don't—oh, don't!" she breathed."The more you plead the quicker the catastrophe will come! You mean to keep me in a state of unreadiness, but my enemies are even less ready—time to strike!""Even Your Majesty can't make war without pretext," wailed Bertha."I can't, eh? I can't? And there are no pretexts, either? What about Morocco? If I seize the smallest harbour of that —— country, isn't that tantamount to invading Algiers? I tell you in such event France and Great Britain must fight whether they like or not. And their blood upon your head, Bertha, the blood of France and Great Britain and Russia, and of the German people, too."He affected to shudder. "A thing of horror such as even Dante could not have conceived!" he exclaimed pathetically."And I the cause?" faltered Bertha."Who else, since you are driving me to war! Can I, dare I wait until Le Creusot, Woolwich and the Putiloffs have finished their preparations? I be —— if I will!" he added rudely, "so I propose to seize the Krupp plant and manufacture my own war material until 'The Day' and after."The War Lady, trembling with amazement, half raised herself from the floor and, balancing on her right arm, stared wildly."Seize my plant?" she gasped; but the War Lord paid no attention. Kicking his sword aside, he once more seized pencil and writing-block."Cum infamia," he read, as if for Bertha's benefit. Then his pencil flew rapidly over the paper: "The plant to be taken over by the act of the Sovereign, Gwinner and Emil Rathenau to look to the financial end, Dernburg and Thyssen to examine the business end." (Arthur von Gwinner, German railway magnate; August Thyssen, mine owner and merchant prince.) He was grabbing the speaking-tube, when Bertha took hold of his shoulder."Uncle Majesty," she whispered softly."If you please, Frau Krupp, no familiarities," barked the War Lord. "You are interfering in business of State.""Listen, Uncle," pleaded Bertha."No,youlisten to your King," said the War Lord coaxingly, "that is, if you will be once more my good little girl, and not presume to mix in my affairs, in affairs of the State.""I am at Your Majesty's mercy," sobbed Bertha."You ought to have thought of that before.""Forgive me, forgive me, Uncle Majesty.""On one condition: that never again you lend ear to outsiders in matters affecting the Krupp works, whatever may be their character or claims to recognition.""I promise, Uncle Majesty."The War Lord leaned back in his chair and motioned to Bertha to sit down."The most terrible War Office secret has just been communicated to me by Metternich," he began, "and I would be unworthy of the trust imposed upon me by the Almighty if I did not use every preventive to undo this new dreadful peril to the Fatherland. Prevention spells: 'Increase of armaments on land and sea and, indeed, above the sea.' That's why I am forced to seize the Krupp works if you dare oppose my will——""But I don't, Uncle Majesty. I swear I don't!" cried Bertha.The War Lord sunk his penetrating eyes into Bertha's as if trying to read the War Lady's very thoughts. "Ring for the baby," he said; and when the child was brought in he whispered to her to dismiss the nurse."Swear on the life of your child that you will not attempt to wrest the control of the Krupp works from my agent, or agents, and that your factories and shipyards shall ever be at my exclusive disposal, your Uncle Majesty to control the output and mode of manufacture absolutely, and decide on all measures deemed essential for the success of the works and the armament and defence of the Fatherland."For a few moments the War Lady stared at the speaker, then allowed him to take her right hand and place it on the baby's head."I swear," she said in a hardly audible voice."On the life of your child," demanded Wilhelm. There was a scarcely concealed threat in his tones."Mercy, Uncle Majesty!""Mercy begins at home. There are thirty thousand families depending upon you—all told, about one hundred and fifty thousand people are living in Essen and suburbs. Do you want to see them all wiped off the face of the earth?""I don't follow, Your Majesty.""I asked a question; I am not after argument. Once more I ask: Would you rather see Essen, my fortress of Cologne, Düsseldorf, the whole Rhine and Ruhr valleys blasted out of existence than say these eight words: 'I swear on the life of my child'?""I can't conceive the meaning of Your Majesty's words; but I love my people, and I would much rather die myself than have them suffer on my account," said the War Lady. She kissed the child, and, with tears streaming from her eyes, pronounced the fatal words."In the name of the Fatherland I thank you," said Wilhelm, touching Bertha's forehead with white lips cold as ice. Then, striking a theatrical pose, he added: "Si Krupp nobiscum, quis contra nos?" (If Krupp is with us, who can stand against us?) He rang the bell. "Dommes," he whispered into the 'phone, adding a word of the secret code. Presently there was a knock at the door. The War Lord himself opened it. Dommes was standing at attention, naked sword in hand. A few more words in the secret code. The door closed, and Dommes began patrolling the corridor.CHAPTER XXXIA GREAT STATE SECRETThe Great Dundonald Plan—The Menace to Essen—Who Holds the Secret?—An Infallible Plan—England Will Have to Pay—The World Will be MineA minute passed while the War Lord listened for the steady tread of his epauletted sentinel on the marble floor and seemed to count the steps. If Dommes had strayed an inch upon the purple runner which he was ordered to avoid, Wilhelm would have rushed out and abused him for a spy. Not until satisfied that the possibility of being overheard was out of the question, he told of the things weighing upon his mind, or of those, rather, that he wanted to weigh on Bertha's mind."You heard of Lord Dundonald?" he asked abruptly."The father of Baron Cochrane, who announced the death of Gordon and the fall of Khartoum," replied Bertha. "Gustav met him at Brooks's, I believe.""The desert rider doesn't interest us now," retorted Wilhelm, "though I would love to have him on my staff—just the man to lead my African forces and to help in the Boer uprising. I am talking of Thomas Cochrane, the tenth Earl. Surely you learned about his good work against Napoleon and his exploits in South American waters? For a time he was admiral of the Chilian Fleet, re-entering the British naval service in the last years of William IV.'s reign.""I recollect now," said Bertha."Well, the two elder Dundonalds were scientists, like your father and grandfather. Indeed, Dundonaldgrand-pèremade several epoch-making chemical discoveries—I suspect Heydebrand is stealing his ideas on every hand" (Dr. Ernst von Heydebrand, leader of the Agrarian party and a husbandman of note), "for Earl Archie enlarged on the relations between agriculture and chemistry even during the French Revolution; but Thomas Dundonald, his son, the same who defeated the Corsican at sea, was, or rather is, the man who threatens the Fatherland, even though buried these fifty years and more. Industry is indebted to him for discoveries in the line of compressed air, improvements in engines and propellers, but hischef d'oeuvrewas a war machine."I tell you, Bertha, it looms up larger and larger as the struggle that is sure to come approaches—a perpetual threat menacing the stability of my Empire."The enemy—I mean the British War Office—has wrapt that thing of horror in darkest mystery ever since its inception a hundred years ago, and Haldane is as secretive about it as the Prince Regent was in the early decades of the nineteenth century."During my every visit to England I have tried to find out from princes, statesmen and military men on the Dundonald plan, only to meet with patriotic objections in one place, with bluff in another. Lord Roberts went so far as to say there was no such thing. But King Edward, when Prince of Wales, contradicted Roberts, without suspecting, of course, that I had quizzed the Field Marshal. He had seen the document, he said; it rested in a secret drawer of the War Minister's safe. 'No other War Office official has access to it,' he told me, 'and it's the only copy in existence.'"His word notwithstanding, there was a possibility, of course, that the plans of the great war machine might be concealed somewhere about Lord Dundonald's town residence in Portman Square, or in the archives of Gwyrch Castle, his seat in Wales, and Wedell has spent ten thousands upon ten thousands, bribing confidential servants, librarians and secretaries and what not? I had half made up my mind to approach the present Earl, when Metternich, by the merest accident, came upon some of the information sought after."Bertha," continued Wilhelm, "though we don't know its exact nature yet, the last doubt as to its limitless efficacy as a destroyer is removed—hence, the famous secret of the London War Office constitutes a peril to the German Empire that only war preparations on the largest possible scale can hope to check."He dropped into melodramatic style,tutoyeringBertha: "Dost understand now, child, why I contemplated taking over the Krupp works for the State in case you failed your Uncle Majesty? Such would have been my duty, my sacred duty.""I understand now, understand fully, and I humbly beg Your Majesty's pardon.""It is granted," said the War Lord, with the air of a tyrant annulling a death sentence. "And now you want to know about the menace Dundonald's plan holds out to Essen, of course. But for your fuller understanding we must first go into the history of the case."The War Lord lit a cigarette and settled comfortably into his throne chair. "Some two years before the battle of Leipzig," he began, "Lord Dundonald first startled the British War Office by a device for annihilating all fortified places and armies of Europe, should Bonaparte succeed in uniting them against England. However, his plan was so terrible, the Secretary for War refused to take the responsibility of either rejecting or accepting it, and persuaded the Regent to appoint a committee for its investigationen camera. The Duke of York, Lord Keith, Lord Exmouth and the two Congreves were chosen, and their verdict was: 'Infallible, irresistible, but too inhuman for consideration.' And at that time, Bertha, Englishmen and Englishwomen were hanged for stealing a sheep or an ell of cotton. So you may be sure that Lord Dundonald's war machine is no more burdened with sentimentality than 'old Fritz' yonder."The terrible plan was reluctantly pigeon-holed, and, as you know, Prussia, not the English, smashed Napoleon."In 1817 Lord Dundonald went to South America, having previously pledged his word of honour that he would not use his invention for the benefit of foreigners, and that, on the contrary, it should remain for ever at the disposal of England's War Office. Later, his lordship confessed that he had been tempted time and again to employ his invention, but refrained from self-respect."After 1832 he was back in London, and from then on until his death in 1860 he submitted his terrible plan to each succeeding War Minister, and each of these gentlemen declared the method capable of realisation with the awful results predicted by the author, yet too savage for adoption by a Christian government."Followed the Crimean War, with its initial anxieties, particularly to my grandmother. To her Lord Dundonald, then quite an old man, submitted his plan anew, which he said would shorten the war; but Queen Victoria hadn't the heart to listen to the inhuman proposal. However, Lord Palmerston had the invention officially investigated, appointing the most progressive scientists of the day for the task. As expected, they upheld Lord Dundonald's claims in every particular, but the inhumanity clause attached forbade its acceptance under a ruler like Queen Victoria, and once more the plan was shelved."Of course," added the War Lord, "they were fighting against Russia then. If it had been Germany, that blackguard Palmerston would have hanged the committee that declared against its acceptance."That happened sixty years ago," he went on, "and the British War Office has kept Dundonald's terrible plan in reserve ever since. Nor has its exact nature leaked out, though time and again one or other of the Powers have offered millions for the betrayal of the secret. Now, if I had been War Lord when Lord Dundonald was travelling in Germany—but that's neither here nor there," he added gloomily.Wilhelm walked to the empty fireplace and stared at the lifeless logs, while a sinister and cruel expression intensified the brutality of his features, "You heard of Frederick the Great stealing the dancer La Barbarina from the Venetians, bodily snatching her out of the ambassador's coach? So would I have kidnapped Lord Dundonald, 70 Wilhelmstrasse" (the palace of the British Embassy) "notwithstanding."I would have clapped him into Spandau, and kept him at a diet of bread and water until he revealed his secret in every detail—yes, and put to the test, too. And if starvation hadn't fetched him round—why, we have a lot of that Nurembergbric-à-brac—thumb-screws, Spanish boots and toys of that sort—hidden away in some of the old castles and prisons——" True to his habit of manual illustration, he described some of the workings of the torture machinery by attacking the atmosphere."But, as said, it's neither here nor there," he resumed finally. "Back to our muttons, then,mon amie. This is the story which Metternich obtained from two sources: Whitehall and Gwyrch Castle."To-day Dundonald's terrible plan plays a more decisive part in England's foreign policy than ever, being regarded as the supreme reserve force, a reserve force such as the world has never dreamt of. Its point is against Germany, as a matter of course, but I doubt not that Asquith would use it upon his own allies if ever they turned against him. Hence, France, Russia, even Japan, dare not act independently of Great Britain lest she employ Dundonald's terrible secret."As to its nature, according to certain vague information deduced from some of the late Lord Thomas's manuscript notes found at the Welsh castle, the hope that in the meantime it had been superseded by modern explosives, and that its main principle, or allied principles, were no longer the last cry in the line of destruction, has proved absolutely untenable. His menacing method is as infallible and irresistible to-day as it was a hundred years ago; all your dynamiters, nitro-glyceriners, lydditers and the rest of them notwithstanding, Bertha."The War Lord struck a tragic pose: "To sum up, in concocting this crime against humanity the English lord degraded his intellect beneath the meanest animal. Your poor child," he murmured, "like my fortresses and towns on the coast of the North Sea or Baltic, so Essen and the peaceful Ruhr valley may be swallowed up in the whirlwind of his enormities.""I shall defend my boy with my last breath!" cried Bertha, jumping to her feet, "him and all my people. Tell me, Uncle Majesty, why is Essen especially menaced?""Its proximity to the frontier is our most vulnerable point. Pray, and pray hard, Bertha, that Wilhelmina remains our friend. If she joined our enemies, Lord Dundonald's devilish invention might be brought to your very doors, through the Zuyder Zee and Waal, and Germany's armoury, the Krupp works, obliterated; the Fatherland itself could be wiped off the map."I hope to prevent this by throwing an iron wall across Belgium and Northern France," he continued, tracing a line on the wall-map, while Bertha faltered out:"And this English menace——""How it works, you mean? With the resistless energy of Etna in eruption and the iron grip of the flow of ashes that buried Pompeii and Herculaneum. Only here will be no escape by water; but for my protecting arm you will all be suffocated in bed, or standing or going, as it were."The War Lord stepped to the window and looked through the telescope fixed on a stand. "As far as the eye travels," he monologued, "one vast ghastly cemetery. Every house and cottage a grave, this villa a mausoleum.""Save us!" shrieked Bertha. "Your Majesty alone can save us!""I will," said the War Lord, "my Imperial word: they shall not harm a hair on your child's head. With the Krupps working according to my plans, I will save Essen and my ships and my fortresses, too, for danger anticipated is half overcome; and when 'The Day' arrives I will move so quickly Whitehall won't have time to put the Scottish nobleman's surprise into practice. Listen, Bertha:"The Japs disembarked eight thousand men at Sakhalin in a single hour, and whatever these brown devils did my army will have to go them one better. I will fall on Belgium, and, as I told Krupp, hack my way to Calais. By that time, maybe, you will have completed the howitzer that, planted at Calais, will make Dover Castle tumble into the dust. If you haven't, my air fleet alone must pull off the job. After closing the mouth of the Thames——""Sheerness to be blockaded?""By mines, Zeppelin, admiral. And before they have recovered from their surprise I will have three hundred and fifty thousand men on the way to Threadneedle Street. About the same time King George and Mr. Asquith, or whoever is in power, will get a wireless to the effect that, to the indemnity England will have to pay, a thousand million pounds will be added if there is an attempt to interrupt the march of my armies by using the Dundonald plan, or if same is used anywhere or at any time against my possessions. My admonition will be in time, for to launch an undertaking so gigantic as to baffle even the most enterprising of your own lieutenants, Bertha, will take the slow English months and months; the swiftness of my movements, then, can be relied upon to forestall the evil intended to make our own warlike invention pale into insignificance.""But the English fleet, Your Majesty?""Obsolete, old iron so far as the Channel is concerned. If I have enough airships, I won't bother about George's Dreadnoughts at all, for my nine army corps can be shipped from Calais in half an hour's time."As you know, my latest Zep. carries a hundred persons, and I have been talking it over with your Board and the Count: there are no technical obstacles against the construction of airships four times the size; airships can expand even more readily than howitzers."And the dream of my little girl need not be abandoned, either," added the War Lord in softer tones, "for the telegram to King George will further stipulate that the Dundonald secret must be turned over to me, and that I will have a hundred hostages to guarantee my absolute monopoly of this war machine—all the living war ministers and the heads of the families of the war ministers for the last hundred years, with a sprinkling of dukes, princes, high statesmen and low politicians to boot. Lady Warwick has sometimes wondered what the English nobility is good for—I'll show her."The Dundonald secret in my exclusive keeping," concluded Wilhelm, "you can devote the Krupp plant in all future to the ideals of the pacifists; for the world, awed into submission and silence lest I make a vast Pompeii out of a rebel country—the world will be mine!"With the War Lady's astonished eyes following him as he strode the length and breadth of the room, the War Lord chuckled to himself. "Lord Dundonald's crude notes, found by my agents, have put me on the track of the secret; anyhow, we are now experimenting in Charlottenburg. My experts call it a liquid perambulant fire, a hundred per cent. more efficacious than my asphyxiating gas for clearing a road through a human wall, as each cylinder is guaranteed to lay low man, beast and technical obstacle for a space of a hundred and more square feet. What do you say to that, Bertha?""You are wonderful, Uncle Majesty," said Bertha."Invincible, arm in arm with the War Lady," declaimed Wilhelm.
CHAPTER XXIX
SOME MORE SECRET HISTORY
Deluding Rathenau—Callous Experiments—What Lord Palmerston Said—The Kaiser's Aims
Deluding Rathenau—Callous Experiments—What Lord Palmerston Said—The Kaiser's Aims
"What is this I hear?" demanded the War Lord, having scantily acknowledged Herr Krupp von Bohlen's low obeisance. "I want you to understand once and for all that your wife is my ward, and that any offence to her spells disrespect to Majesty."
The Overlord of the Krupp works was confused with surprise. He attempted to make answer, but did not get further than a formal: "May it please Your Majesty."
"I have no further commands for you at the moment," he was cut short. "Wait in the Adjutant's room until called."
"A.E.G.," cried Wilhelm to the adjutant of the House Marshal's office, opening the door for Krupp.
"My dear Rathenau," he said, when an old man, stout and stockily built, with a philanthropic chin and a complexion denoting indifferent health, walked in. "My dear Rathenau, being credited with seeing ahead, perhaps you'll tell me what this means?" And he pointed to half a dozen entries topping his daily calendar.
"Asafoetida," read the electrical end of the Jewish triumvirate of self-made men—Ballin, Thyssen, Rathenau. "Does Majesty want me to create a corner in the reverse of eau de Cologne?"
"Yes and no," said Wilhelm. "But like Ziethen did before Frederick, sit down. And so you may not fall asleep like the great cavalry leader when visiting the king in his old age, I will tell you a story."
He retailed the yarn about the meeting between Franz Ferdinand and Cardinal Schlauch, the Secret Service man in the bed, and what No. 103 wished he had placed under the bed before the interview.
"It gave me an idea," he continued, "an idea, I confess, strengthened at Essen. Why not bottle the noxious gases set free in the furnaces, and let them loose on the enemy?"
"What, kill them wholesale?" cried Rathenau, moving uneasily in his chair. Philanthropy is one of his hobbies, and underhanded methods go against his grain. The War Lord knows this, and clapped the silencer on his savage bluntness.
"Kill them? No. Wholesale? No, too. There is to be no gale of these gases—just a breeze to knock out, or knock over, offensive or defensive. I figure this way: Maybe the enemy, entrenched, has to be dislodged at any price to gain some given point. We can't get at them with the ordinary style of weapon; they won't come out even to be hand-grenaded. In such cases, I hold it good strategy to smoke them out."
"Asphyxiating gas," mumbled Rathenau half to himself.
"A good name—something suspending animation—suspending it while we take the coveted place. We won't lose a man, and the enemy is mulcted out of prisoners only, for all placedhors de combatby our chemicals will be cared for by the Red Cross."
"Majesty does not intend to have the gases absolutely poisonous?" inquired Rathenau.
"Now, would I have asked you, whose humanity all Berlin admires, if I did?" cried the War Lord; "if I was signing death warrants, I would not have applied to you, but to Krupp. He is a natural born butcher, I tell you. Krupp devises means to destroy life with the gusto of an American barkeeper mixing cocktails. They blamed Nero for saying he wished the Roman people had but one head that he might knock it off. You should see Krupp gloat over my new howitzers."
"And those noxious gases, the workings of which Your Majesty observed at Essen, do not inflict permanent injury?"
"In the majority of cases black coffee suffices to make the men fit for work again; in a minor number of cases mild palliatives are required. I advised free distribution of milk for those suffering from a weak stomach. Hypodermic injections are resorted to once or twice a week. So you see our 'gassing' will be quite harmless."
When the President and Owner of the "A.E.G." (German for General Electric Company) still refused to wax enthusiastic, the War Lord tried a new tag. "It's the charitableness—I almost said the Christianity—of the thing that mainly attracts me," he lied. "You remember Valentina's husband inThe Huguenots. He was murdered during St. Bartholomew's night, at the side of my ancestor, Admiral Coligny. The Comte de Nevars had been asked a little while before to join in the massacre of the Protestants, but refused, pleading that his family contained a long list of warriors, but not a single assassin. So am I trying to curtail killing by the proposed new method of attack. Prisoners, yes; the more the merrier; but deaths and wounds as few as possible."
"Hydrochlorine, with the accent on the hydro, might possibly serve Your Majesty," said Rathenau, after thinking hard for a few seconds.
"Very well, write it down," ordered the War Lord. "Besides Krupp, who can furnish this chemical?"
"The Ruhr Chemical Works and the Ludwigshafen Aniline Factory might."
Rathenau was dismissed with scant thanks, and Krupp was readmitted to listen to the substance of Wilhelm's conference with the President of the A.E.G., the latter's philanthropic objections being carefully marked as the War Lord's own, while the diluting advised was dismissed as namby-pamby.
Krupp, after listening respectfully, said: "May it please Your Majesty, I have had a little experience with asphyxiating gas. We used it to destroy a number of consumptive cows, thinking it the more humane method. They were to be benumbed before slaughter.
"God forbid that Bertha, who is very much attached to the animals on the estate, ever learns what really did happen. As for myself, I had an inkling, but where experience is to be gained charity must take a back seat."
"Well said," commented the War Lord. "Go on!"
"We tethered the cattle in an enclosure, their heads over a furrow from which the poison gas was rising. It had a sharp, bitter smell, and as it caught the animals' throat they gasped and choked. Some attempted to breathe deeply and could not, and all went giddy, it seemed, but did not lose consciousness.
"The chief vet. had predicted that the intense irritation of the bronchial mucous membrane would fill the tubes with a fluid which the animals could not expel, and this is what did happen.
"We let them suffer for experience's sake, then gave them salted water. This cleared their lungs and forestalled complete suffocation."
"You have gathered the technical information from the medical report?" asked the War Lord.
"Partly from that, partly from observation," replied Krupp. "When the vets. stated that the animals were on the point of slow suffocation—drowning, we killed them by the quicker method. But one cow was allowed to die by poison gas, to give necessary clues to the medical men. They stated, after investigation, that the gas had had a corrosive action, destroying the mucosa."
"Very interesting," said the War Lord, who had seemingly forgotten about his pretended motives of philanthropy. "Your chief vet. shall report in full to my Ministry of Cult. I shall order that from now on condemned animals shall be delivered to the concerns manufacturing this kind of gas for scientific experiments."
The red disc on the War Lord's desk went up. Wilhelm looked at the clock. "Delbrueck." Then, turning to Krupp: "You shall wait and hear what he has to say."
The successor of Professor Treitschke was bringing the War Lord an essay on "Germany as the Land of the Chosen People," a sort of theological-political tract, suggested by Wilhelm and partly formulated by Court Chaplain Dryander. Its present form had been decided on by Professors Harnack, Schiemann, Meyer and the editor of the Prussian Annals (Preussische Jahrbuecher Magazin).
"Typed," said the War Lord approvingly. "I wish you would instil that modern idea into those of your colleagues, who annoy me by their handwriting. The worse it is, the more scientific they deem it. I will read it presently. Now tell Krupp how you view the situation with regard to England."
"The United Kingdom they call it," sneered Delbrueck, the most loquacious of "that damned band of professors," to quote Palmerston. "Well, there will be one less in the quartette when war comes—Ireland. The Green Isle will join us when the first shot is fired by a German battery. Further, there is every reason to believe that the title of Emperor of India will be as obsolete as that of King of Jerusalem before hostilities are under way a month, while New Zealand, Australia, South Africa and Canada will certainly not miss the chance for gaining independence."
Herr Krupp looked at His Majesty in quite bewildered fashion. Evidently he had not reckoned on such far-reaching eventualities, but the War Lord had.
"Miss their chance for independence? Not likely! Go on, Delbrueck. Tell him about the Boers."
"I needn't assure you, Herr Krupp, on which side the defeated of 1901 will fight. It is self-evident," said Delbrueck.
"And Egypt?" ventured Herr Krupp, to show his patriotism.
"German industry and discipline shall fructify the land of the Pharaohs like the Nile itself. We will drive out the English of course," cried the War Lord.
"The arming of India will be a tremendous task," he continued. "As you know, I am sending the Crown Prince to India, and the military experts accompanying him will furnish all missing links."
"May I suggest that His Imperial Highness sound the Indian Princes," interpolated Professor Delbrueck.
"All that is provided for," retorted the War Lord.
But Delbrueck would not be discouraged in his optimisms. "In addition," he went on, "Krupp guns will bark forth the declaration of independence by South Africa, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and the rest of the British dominions, territories and Island Kingdoms. Quite an undertaking, eh?"
At this point the War Lord came to Delbrueck's relief. "Finally there is that beggar Turkey. You mustn't be hard on Abdul Hamid, Krupp. Bad pay, of course, but he never hesitates about pulling chestnuts out of the fire for me, and I like him. Besides, since we pay China a subsidy of a million per year for getting ready to wallop Nicholas, why not treat Constantinople with liberality?"
Krupp bowed and promised to talk the matter over with his board of directors, but the War Lord scarcely listened. He had deigned to express a wish—woe to the person, or persons, not interpreting the wish as an All Highest command.
He turned to the professor. "Delbrueck," he said, "I had a letter from Francis Joseph. He has set his heart on Bosnia, and wants me to support him. Is there any way of arguing with Russia from the historic point of view?"
"I will look into the matter for Your Majesty at once."
"Very well. If you do not succeed, Russia will get a glimpse of my shining armour, which is the best argument, after all."
"Now you know my friends, official and otherwise," concluded Wilhelm, again addressing Krupp; "about my aims I have talked to you before. Always bear in mind that I am German Emperor—an expansive title relating to all lands and peoples of the Germanic family, no matter what name they may go under.
"We must have German Holland and German Belgium, German Tyrol and German Switzerland, and, of course, German Austria. As you know, I have a good title to the whole of North-Eastern France, too, but I will waive that for the Continental Channel coast."
"Your Majesty must have Trieste," said Delbrueck.
"I must have and mean to have all the naval outlets and outposts necessary to German trade and my protection," said Wilhelm in most Olympian style.
CHAPTER XXX
BROWBEATING THE WAR LADY
A Letter from Count Metternich—Scaring the Kaiser—Bertha Offends the War Lord—Using the Secret Code—For "The Day"—An Awful Oath—The Kaiser Wins
A Letter from Count Metternich—Scaring the Kaiser—Bertha Offends the War Lord—Using the Secret Code—For "The Day"—An Awful Oath—The Kaiser Wins
"I can almost forgive Metternich for allowing himself to be bested by Sir Frank, for that last yarn he sent me is not to be sneezed at. Bertha and Krupp are on the point of a momentous quarrel. Some pacifist idiot—a woman, probably—put a plea in her ear about 'trade in murder,' 'profit in man-killing,' and that sort of thing, and the baby did the rest.
"She sits on the Huegel, befouling the machinery for conquest-making below her windows.
"'Some of the ordnance we are sending to China to-day may kill my unborn child,'" she writes, "and things have come to such a pass that Krupp had to instruct the coachman to avoid certain roads where Bertha's carriage might meet with ammunition and other transports.
"And ever since, all day long and half the night, she accuses Krupp of using her money to forge guns and bullets that, by and by, may seek the heart or limbs of his own son.
"'Don't I know when war will break out?' he retorted angrily the other day. 'Long before that our boy will be on a journey round the world.' Think of a Prussian officer forced to indulge in such damnable stuff!" cried the War Lord.
"I submit, Your Majesty, that one has to temporise with women, especially with a young mother," suggested Prince Bülow.
"Silly sentimentalities," sneered the War Lord; "I want none of them. Bertha has to be broken of her freak—broken," he repeated, gritting his teeth. "Why," he continued, "she even refuses to take joy in her charities now, because, she says, 'money made out of armaments is tainted and no good can come from it.'
"If I allow that sort of thing to go on there will be aKladderadatsch" (fataldénouement), "one fine day. She may attempt to wrest from Krupp the power of attorney under which he acts as my agent, and there is such an abomination as divorce, you know—oh,mille pardons, you do know. And, worse luck, my courts deal in it as well as the Vatican." (The War Lord referred to Princess Bülow, whose first marriage to Count von Donhoff was dissolved by the Holy See in 1881.)
Bülow reddened under the insult. "I am wholly unsuited to interfere in other people's family affairs," he blurted. Then, frightened at losing his temper, added: "I beg Your Majesty's pardon."
"My ward's affairs are my own," declared the War Lord haughtily. "I'll settle with Bertha myself, make her eat out of my hand—take my word for it—and this will help."
He showed the Chancellor a long, handwritten letter, with the imprint of Carlton House Terrace, marked "Private and Confidential," and asked him to read it aloud. The address was that of the German Embassy at the Court of St. James's, and Count Wolff von Metternich, His Majesty's Ambassador, was the correspondent. He had been permanently in London since 1901, previously serving his diplomatic apprenticeship there, off and on, between 1885 and 1890. His naïve complaint in the Joseph Chamberlain affair has been noted. As he was the War Lord's confidant while in the service of the Berlin Foreign Office, Count Metternich could not have been altogether without knowledge of Wilhelm's treacherous conduct in and toward England. The War Lord claimed British hospitality time and again to combine espionage with all too successful attempts to hoodwink the English Sovereign and his statesmen about his real intention toward Great Britain. King Edward was not too blind, though, to what was going on; he is credited with the remark that the War Lord was not a gentleman.
"Important, if true," said Prince Bülow, handing back the letter.
"Just as important if itisn'ttrue—for my purposes," quoth Wilhelm. He walked up and down the room for several minutes, mumbling things, then suddenly confronted the Chancellor: "A belated answer to my letter to Tweedmouth—can it be that?"
Prince Bülow was surprised beyond words. The War Lord referring to his clumsy attempt (in the early part of the year 1908) to throw dust in the eyes of a British Minister of State in regard to his responsibilities, by an act of unprecedented condescension!
Wilhelm's personal letter to the First Sea Lord had caused considerable excitement in Germany, but there had been no discussion of it at the Chancellery. The subject was too ticklish for that—particularly its aftermath, with its references to "foolish stratagems," "unintelligent attempt to deceive," "refusal to be perturbed by such little incidents," and last, but not least, England's avowed determination to thwart Wilhelm's plans to be supreme upon the sea, since "there is nothing for Great Britain between foreign sea supremacy and ruin."
And those "wretchedTempsarticles" (Majesty's description was stronger), admonishing England not to put faith in the War Lord's protestations, but strengthen her navy and double her army.
The War Lord seemed to divine what was going through his Chancellor's mind. He changed the subject. "Edward and Nicki have been talking it over; they are afraid of me, despite boasted Anglo-Russian and Anglo-French propositions, and want to give me a good scare!" he cried. "But I will show them that I don't care a fig for their Entente. The Mediterranean trip is off. My purple standard shall fly at Cowes, and Wedell shall arrange for a little trip into France. Yes, France," he insisted. "I have long wished for a view of the strategical passes of the Vosges, and you must persuade Fallières to invite me to see theSchlucht.[#] Less than an hour's motor trip from the frontier, you know."
[#] The proposed motor tour across the French frontier was actually "arranged," as suggested by the War Lord, and was billed to come off in the first or second week of September (1908). However, at the last moment the War Lord showed the white feather, having been informed that he would never leave French soil alive, a number of patriots having vowed to kill him. Previous to this there had been much irritation in France and talk of "impudence," "cynicism," and "espionage."
"I will leave no stone unturned to execute Your Majesty's commands," said Prince Bülow, indulging in a profound bow to hide his face and avoid betraying an astonishment bordering on perplexity.
"Wonder if Edward can be persuaded to meet me in the Solent," mused the War Lord. "I would love to tell him about my trip to Heligoland, our coastal defences there, and preparations for aerial invasion. Of course, the details will be Greek to Uncle, since he knows less of military matters than my two-year-old fillies at Trakehnen, but my tale may possibly induce him to be more careful in matters of hisamours impropre: Russia and France. Don't you think so, Bülow?"
"The Quadruple Alliance, Your Majesty? I can only repeat the conviction previously expressed—that it is entirely pacific, a defensive measure absolutely. As to King Edward, his political strategy is certainly superior to his military talents, but I was under the impression that he introduced Your Majesty to the Maxim gun."
"He happened to be my guest on the day set for the trial of that incomparable man-killer, and I took him to Lichterfelde to show him how I would annihilate his vest-pocket army if he wasn't as careful as his Mamma. Strange to say, he seemed to be quiteau fait. I had bet Moltke a dozenEchtethat Uncle couldn't distinguish a Nordenfeldt or Gardner from the old-time Gatling; but he did. 'Confound your impudence,' I said to Moltke, when I paid the price; but Helmuth convinced me that I got off dirt cheap. The Maxim gun, he persuaded me, must have undreamt of possibilities if even Edward recognises its importance as a war machine.
"So the emptyechte-box taught me that every copper invested in Maxim guns means one dead—an enemy—hence, that I can't have enough Maxims. I want fifty, no, a hundred thousand."
Wilhelm smiled sardonically as he added: "I told Krupp he would lose his job unless he improves on Maxim and gets up a machine-gun as light as our army rifle and as easily fired. But that reminds me. I will go to Essen to-night to impress Bertha with her patriotic duties. You'll keep Krupp here."
"Frau Krupp," said Wilhelm, as he retired with the War Lady to the library of Villa Huegel.
"Bertha," she pleaded.
"Bertha is treating her Uncle Majesty very badly."
"May it please Your Majesty to say in which way I have offended?"
"In every way, in the surest way, in the most traitorous way!" cried the War Lord, trying to stab the floor with the point of his sheathed sword—a pitiable sight, since his poor left hand was powerless to move. "You are thinking of diverting the works from their sacred purpose: The Fatherland's defence."
Wilhelm struck a sentimental pose. "That's my reward for the love and care I bestowed on Frederick's child," he half monologued. "I educated her, exalted her above all women in her station of life, treated her like a child of my own, like my own sons and daughter. I have bestowed as much thought on Essen as on my army and navy; made her business and fortune the grandest of their kind; selected for her loving husband a man of surpassing capacities and gave her wedding theéclatof a royal function. Emperors, sultans and kings have bedizened her with courtesies and high decorations for my sake—the legend of 'the richest girl' has melted into 'the happiest woman in the world'—semper fidelis, and Madame, satiated and ungrateful, turns me the cold shoulder."
"Oh, Uncle Majesty, how can you say such things?"
"Bertha," cried the War Lord, laying his hand on her knee, "if you were not Frederick's daughter, were not rich beyond the dreams of avarice, I would ask: How much—how much did England pay you for deserting me and the Fatherland?"
Frau Krupp slipped from the chair, and on her knees implored her terrifying visitor to show mercy.
"The King of Prussia never pardons traitors."
The word awakened Frau Krupp's self-respect. "Traitor!" she cried; "I would be a traitor to humanity if I continued making faggots to set the world afire."
The War Lord broke into wild laughter. "So that's the melody," he shouted, "echoes of the gutter Press in London, Paris, Petersburg, Tokyo! It's well you mentioned it, Frau Krupp; I know now exactly how we stand, you and I, the benefactor and the unworthy object of my magnanimity."
Bertha lay on the silken rug sobbing her heart out, but for Wilhelm the quivering form of the girl for whom he professed a father's love was mere air.
Sitting down at the great desk, he shouted: "I command" into the speaking-tube sacred to his All Highest person, and, Adjutant Baron Dommes responding, he ordered: "Prepare for a confidential message to the Chancellor by secret code. Have the line cleared. You will attend to the wire in person."
He grabbed a block of paper and began to write, tearing off sheet after sheet with partially finished sentences, rejecting his own words as fast as he wrote them, and talking to himself in tones considerably above a stage whisper.
"Would suit the Austrian Baroness to turn Krupps into an ironmongery for household and farm goods," he sneered savagely, "but the mollycoddles shall know presently that they haven't got a silly girl to deal with." He paused, giving a furtive look to the prostrate Bertha; then began scribbling again and reading his hasty scrawl to himself:
"Bethmann-Hollweg shall consult with Kuentzel and Harnier about condemnation proceedings against—— Never mind, I will give names by 'phone after receipt of message is acknowledged. Must be kept a profound State secret. Anyone mentioning it even in the presence of his secretary will be dismissedcum infamia. Remember, the best legal talent only." (The persons named were high officials in the Ministry of Justice.)
Excitement would not let Wilhelm be seated long, and he began pacing the floor, dragging his sword.
"Preposterous!" he alternately mumbled or hissed. "A mere slut foiling my plans, interfering with my life's work! Stop making implements of war: the great Alexander held up on the road to India by a blacksmith!" He laughed hysterically, lunging forth to both sides with his clenched fist as if striking at imaginary enemies.
"But the maw of death will be glutted with or without your assistance, Frau Krupp—glutted to nausea!" he cried, pausing before the trembling girl. "There will be an accumulation of anguish such as the world has never witnessed, despite thee, ingrate that thou art."
The War Lady raised her hand and looked at him with ghastly, tear-stained eyes.
"Don't—oh, don't!" she breathed.
"The more you plead the quicker the catastrophe will come! You mean to keep me in a state of unreadiness, but my enemies are even less ready—time to strike!"
"Even Your Majesty can't make war without pretext," wailed Bertha.
"I can't, eh? I can't? And there are no pretexts, either? What about Morocco? If I seize the smallest harbour of that —— country, isn't that tantamount to invading Algiers? I tell you in such event France and Great Britain must fight whether they like or not. And their blood upon your head, Bertha, the blood of France and Great Britain and Russia, and of the German people, too."
He affected to shudder. "A thing of horror such as even Dante could not have conceived!" he exclaimed pathetically.
"And I the cause?" faltered Bertha.
"Who else, since you are driving me to war! Can I, dare I wait until Le Creusot, Woolwich and the Putiloffs have finished their preparations? I be —— if I will!" he added rudely, "so I propose to seize the Krupp plant and manufacture my own war material until 'The Day' and after."
The War Lady, trembling with amazement, half raised herself from the floor and, balancing on her right arm, stared wildly.
"Seize my plant?" she gasped; but the War Lord paid no attention. Kicking his sword aside, he once more seized pencil and writing-block.
"Cum infamia," he read, as if for Bertha's benefit. Then his pencil flew rapidly over the paper: "The plant to be taken over by the act of the Sovereign, Gwinner and Emil Rathenau to look to the financial end, Dernburg and Thyssen to examine the business end." (Arthur von Gwinner, German railway magnate; August Thyssen, mine owner and merchant prince.) He was grabbing the speaking-tube, when Bertha took hold of his shoulder.
"Uncle Majesty," she whispered softly.
"If you please, Frau Krupp, no familiarities," barked the War Lord. "You are interfering in business of State."
"Listen, Uncle," pleaded Bertha.
"No,youlisten to your King," said the War Lord coaxingly, "that is, if you will be once more my good little girl, and not presume to mix in my affairs, in affairs of the State."
"I am at Your Majesty's mercy," sobbed Bertha.
"You ought to have thought of that before."
"Forgive me, forgive me, Uncle Majesty."
"On one condition: that never again you lend ear to outsiders in matters affecting the Krupp works, whatever may be their character or claims to recognition."
"I promise, Uncle Majesty."
The War Lord leaned back in his chair and motioned to Bertha to sit down.
"The most terrible War Office secret has just been communicated to me by Metternich," he began, "and I would be unworthy of the trust imposed upon me by the Almighty if I did not use every preventive to undo this new dreadful peril to the Fatherland. Prevention spells: 'Increase of armaments on land and sea and, indeed, above the sea.' That's why I am forced to seize the Krupp works if you dare oppose my will——"
"But I don't, Uncle Majesty. I swear I don't!" cried Bertha.
The War Lord sunk his penetrating eyes into Bertha's as if trying to read the War Lady's very thoughts. "Ring for the baby," he said; and when the child was brought in he whispered to her to dismiss the nurse.
"Swear on the life of your child that you will not attempt to wrest the control of the Krupp works from my agent, or agents, and that your factories and shipyards shall ever be at my exclusive disposal, your Uncle Majesty to control the output and mode of manufacture absolutely, and decide on all measures deemed essential for the success of the works and the armament and defence of the Fatherland."
For a few moments the War Lady stared at the speaker, then allowed him to take her right hand and place it on the baby's head.
"I swear," she said in a hardly audible voice.
"On the life of your child," demanded Wilhelm. There was a scarcely concealed threat in his tones.
"Mercy, Uncle Majesty!"
"Mercy begins at home. There are thirty thousand families depending upon you—all told, about one hundred and fifty thousand people are living in Essen and suburbs. Do you want to see them all wiped off the face of the earth?"
"I don't follow, Your Majesty."
"I asked a question; I am not after argument. Once more I ask: Would you rather see Essen, my fortress of Cologne, Düsseldorf, the whole Rhine and Ruhr valleys blasted out of existence than say these eight words: 'I swear on the life of my child'?"
"I can't conceive the meaning of Your Majesty's words; but I love my people, and I would much rather die myself than have them suffer on my account," said the War Lady. She kissed the child, and, with tears streaming from her eyes, pronounced the fatal words.
"In the name of the Fatherland I thank you," said Wilhelm, touching Bertha's forehead with white lips cold as ice. Then, striking a theatrical pose, he added: "Si Krupp nobiscum, quis contra nos?" (If Krupp is with us, who can stand against us?) He rang the bell. "Dommes," he whispered into the 'phone, adding a word of the secret code. Presently there was a knock at the door. The War Lord himself opened it. Dommes was standing at attention, naked sword in hand. A few more words in the secret code. The door closed, and Dommes began patrolling the corridor.
CHAPTER XXXI
A GREAT STATE SECRET
The Great Dundonald Plan—The Menace to Essen—Who Holds the Secret?—An Infallible Plan—England Will Have to Pay—The World Will be Mine
The Great Dundonald Plan—The Menace to Essen—Who Holds the Secret?—An Infallible Plan—England Will Have to Pay—The World Will be Mine
A minute passed while the War Lord listened for the steady tread of his epauletted sentinel on the marble floor and seemed to count the steps. If Dommes had strayed an inch upon the purple runner which he was ordered to avoid, Wilhelm would have rushed out and abused him for a spy. Not until satisfied that the possibility of being overheard was out of the question, he told of the things weighing upon his mind, or of those, rather, that he wanted to weigh on Bertha's mind.
"You heard of Lord Dundonald?" he asked abruptly.
"The father of Baron Cochrane, who announced the death of Gordon and the fall of Khartoum," replied Bertha. "Gustav met him at Brooks's, I believe."
"The desert rider doesn't interest us now," retorted Wilhelm, "though I would love to have him on my staff—just the man to lead my African forces and to help in the Boer uprising. I am talking of Thomas Cochrane, the tenth Earl. Surely you learned about his good work against Napoleon and his exploits in South American waters? For a time he was admiral of the Chilian Fleet, re-entering the British naval service in the last years of William IV.'s reign."
"I recollect now," said Bertha.
"Well, the two elder Dundonalds were scientists, like your father and grandfather. Indeed, Dundonaldgrand-pèremade several epoch-making chemical discoveries—I suspect Heydebrand is stealing his ideas on every hand" (Dr. Ernst von Heydebrand, leader of the Agrarian party and a husbandman of note), "for Earl Archie enlarged on the relations between agriculture and chemistry even during the French Revolution; but Thomas Dundonald, his son, the same who defeated the Corsican at sea, was, or rather is, the man who threatens the Fatherland, even though buried these fifty years and more. Industry is indebted to him for discoveries in the line of compressed air, improvements in engines and propellers, but hischef d'oeuvrewas a war machine.
"I tell you, Bertha, it looms up larger and larger as the struggle that is sure to come approaches—a perpetual threat menacing the stability of my Empire.
"The enemy—I mean the British War Office—has wrapt that thing of horror in darkest mystery ever since its inception a hundred years ago, and Haldane is as secretive about it as the Prince Regent was in the early decades of the nineteenth century.
"During my every visit to England I have tried to find out from princes, statesmen and military men on the Dundonald plan, only to meet with patriotic objections in one place, with bluff in another. Lord Roberts went so far as to say there was no such thing. But King Edward, when Prince of Wales, contradicted Roberts, without suspecting, of course, that I had quizzed the Field Marshal. He had seen the document, he said; it rested in a secret drawer of the War Minister's safe. 'No other War Office official has access to it,' he told me, 'and it's the only copy in existence.'
"His word notwithstanding, there was a possibility, of course, that the plans of the great war machine might be concealed somewhere about Lord Dundonald's town residence in Portman Square, or in the archives of Gwyrch Castle, his seat in Wales, and Wedell has spent ten thousands upon ten thousands, bribing confidential servants, librarians and secretaries and what not? I had half made up my mind to approach the present Earl, when Metternich, by the merest accident, came upon some of the information sought after.
"Bertha," continued Wilhelm, "though we don't know its exact nature yet, the last doubt as to its limitless efficacy as a destroyer is removed—hence, the famous secret of the London War Office constitutes a peril to the German Empire that only war preparations on the largest possible scale can hope to check."
He dropped into melodramatic style,tutoyeringBertha: "Dost understand now, child, why I contemplated taking over the Krupp works for the State in case you failed your Uncle Majesty? Such would have been my duty, my sacred duty."
"I understand now, understand fully, and I humbly beg Your Majesty's pardon."
"It is granted," said the War Lord, with the air of a tyrant annulling a death sentence. "And now you want to know about the menace Dundonald's plan holds out to Essen, of course. But for your fuller understanding we must first go into the history of the case."
The War Lord lit a cigarette and settled comfortably into his throne chair. "Some two years before the battle of Leipzig," he began, "Lord Dundonald first startled the British War Office by a device for annihilating all fortified places and armies of Europe, should Bonaparte succeed in uniting them against England. However, his plan was so terrible, the Secretary for War refused to take the responsibility of either rejecting or accepting it, and persuaded the Regent to appoint a committee for its investigationen camera. The Duke of York, Lord Keith, Lord Exmouth and the two Congreves were chosen, and their verdict was: 'Infallible, irresistible, but too inhuman for consideration.' And at that time, Bertha, Englishmen and Englishwomen were hanged for stealing a sheep or an ell of cotton. So you may be sure that Lord Dundonald's war machine is no more burdened with sentimentality than 'old Fritz' yonder.
"The terrible plan was reluctantly pigeon-holed, and, as you know, Prussia, not the English, smashed Napoleon.
"In 1817 Lord Dundonald went to South America, having previously pledged his word of honour that he would not use his invention for the benefit of foreigners, and that, on the contrary, it should remain for ever at the disposal of England's War Office. Later, his lordship confessed that he had been tempted time and again to employ his invention, but refrained from self-respect.
"After 1832 he was back in London, and from then on until his death in 1860 he submitted his terrible plan to each succeeding War Minister, and each of these gentlemen declared the method capable of realisation with the awful results predicted by the author, yet too savage for adoption by a Christian government.
"Followed the Crimean War, with its initial anxieties, particularly to my grandmother. To her Lord Dundonald, then quite an old man, submitted his plan anew, which he said would shorten the war; but Queen Victoria hadn't the heart to listen to the inhuman proposal. However, Lord Palmerston had the invention officially investigated, appointing the most progressive scientists of the day for the task. As expected, they upheld Lord Dundonald's claims in every particular, but the inhumanity clause attached forbade its acceptance under a ruler like Queen Victoria, and once more the plan was shelved.
"Of course," added the War Lord, "they were fighting against Russia then. If it had been Germany, that blackguard Palmerston would have hanged the committee that declared against its acceptance.
"That happened sixty years ago," he went on, "and the British War Office has kept Dundonald's terrible plan in reserve ever since. Nor has its exact nature leaked out, though time and again one or other of the Powers have offered millions for the betrayal of the secret. Now, if I had been War Lord when Lord Dundonald was travelling in Germany—but that's neither here nor there," he added gloomily.
Wilhelm walked to the empty fireplace and stared at the lifeless logs, while a sinister and cruel expression intensified the brutality of his features, "You heard of Frederick the Great stealing the dancer La Barbarina from the Venetians, bodily snatching her out of the ambassador's coach? So would I have kidnapped Lord Dundonald, 70 Wilhelmstrasse" (the palace of the British Embassy) "notwithstanding.
"I would have clapped him into Spandau, and kept him at a diet of bread and water until he revealed his secret in every detail—yes, and put to the test, too. And if starvation hadn't fetched him round—why, we have a lot of that Nurembergbric-à-brac—thumb-screws, Spanish boots and toys of that sort—hidden away in some of the old castles and prisons——" True to his habit of manual illustration, he described some of the workings of the torture machinery by attacking the atmosphere.
"But, as said, it's neither here nor there," he resumed finally. "Back to our muttons, then,mon amie. This is the story which Metternich obtained from two sources: Whitehall and Gwyrch Castle.
"To-day Dundonald's terrible plan plays a more decisive part in England's foreign policy than ever, being regarded as the supreme reserve force, a reserve force such as the world has never dreamt of. Its point is against Germany, as a matter of course, but I doubt not that Asquith would use it upon his own allies if ever they turned against him. Hence, France, Russia, even Japan, dare not act independently of Great Britain lest she employ Dundonald's terrible secret.
"As to its nature, according to certain vague information deduced from some of the late Lord Thomas's manuscript notes found at the Welsh castle, the hope that in the meantime it had been superseded by modern explosives, and that its main principle, or allied principles, were no longer the last cry in the line of destruction, has proved absolutely untenable. His menacing method is as infallible and irresistible to-day as it was a hundred years ago; all your dynamiters, nitro-glyceriners, lydditers and the rest of them notwithstanding, Bertha."
The War Lord struck a tragic pose: "To sum up, in concocting this crime against humanity the English lord degraded his intellect beneath the meanest animal. Your poor child," he murmured, "like my fortresses and towns on the coast of the North Sea or Baltic, so Essen and the peaceful Ruhr valley may be swallowed up in the whirlwind of his enormities."
"I shall defend my boy with my last breath!" cried Bertha, jumping to her feet, "him and all my people. Tell me, Uncle Majesty, why is Essen especially menaced?"
"Its proximity to the frontier is our most vulnerable point. Pray, and pray hard, Bertha, that Wilhelmina remains our friend. If she joined our enemies, Lord Dundonald's devilish invention might be brought to your very doors, through the Zuyder Zee and Waal, and Germany's armoury, the Krupp works, obliterated; the Fatherland itself could be wiped off the map.
"I hope to prevent this by throwing an iron wall across Belgium and Northern France," he continued, tracing a line on the wall-map, while Bertha faltered out:
"And this English menace——"
"How it works, you mean? With the resistless energy of Etna in eruption and the iron grip of the flow of ashes that buried Pompeii and Herculaneum. Only here will be no escape by water; but for my protecting arm you will all be suffocated in bed, or standing or going, as it were."
The War Lord stepped to the window and looked through the telescope fixed on a stand. "As far as the eye travels," he monologued, "one vast ghastly cemetery. Every house and cottage a grave, this villa a mausoleum."
"Save us!" shrieked Bertha. "Your Majesty alone can save us!"
"I will," said the War Lord, "my Imperial word: they shall not harm a hair on your child's head. With the Krupps working according to my plans, I will save Essen and my ships and my fortresses, too, for danger anticipated is half overcome; and when 'The Day' arrives I will move so quickly Whitehall won't have time to put the Scottish nobleman's surprise into practice. Listen, Bertha:
"The Japs disembarked eight thousand men at Sakhalin in a single hour, and whatever these brown devils did my army will have to go them one better. I will fall on Belgium, and, as I told Krupp, hack my way to Calais. By that time, maybe, you will have completed the howitzer that, planted at Calais, will make Dover Castle tumble into the dust. If you haven't, my air fleet alone must pull off the job. After closing the mouth of the Thames——"
"Sheerness to be blockaded?"
"By mines, Zeppelin, admiral. And before they have recovered from their surprise I will have three hundred and fifty thousand men on the way to Threadneedle Street. About the same time King George and Mr. Asquith, or whoever is in power, will get a wireless to the effect that, to the indemnity England will have to pay, a thousand million pounds will be added if there is an attempt to interrupt the march of my armies by using the Dundonald plan, or if same is used anywhere or at any time against my possessions. My admonition will be in time, for to launch an undertaking so gigantic as to baffle even the most enterprising of your own lieutenants, Bertha, will take the slow English months and months; the swiftness of my movements, then, can be relied upon to forestall the evil intended to make our own warlike invention pale into insignificance."
"But the English fleet, Your Majesty?"
"Obsolete, old iron so far as the Channel is concerned. If I have enough airships, I won't bother about George's Dreadnoughts at all, for my nine army corps can be shipped from Calais in half an hour's time.
"As you know, my latest Zep. carries a hundred persons, and I have been talking it over with your Board and the Count: there are no technical obstacles against the construction of airships four times the size; airships can expand even more readily than howitzers.
"And the dream of my little girl need not be abandoned, either," added the War Lord in softer tones, "for the telegram to King George will further stipulate that the Dundonald secret must be turned over to me, and that I will have a hundred hostages to guarantee my absolute monopoly of this war machine—all the living war ministers and the heads of the families of the war ministers for the last hundred years, with a sprinkling of dukes, princes, high statesmen and low politicians to boot. Lady Warwick has sometimes wondered what the English nobility is good for—I'll show her.
"The Dundonald secret in my exclusive keeping," concluded Wilhelm, "you can devote the Krupp plant in all future to the ideals of the pacifists; for the world, awed into submission and silence lest I make a vast Pompeii out of a rebel country—the world will be mine!"
With the War Lady's astonished eyes following him as he strode the length and breadth of the room, the War Lord chuckled to himself. "Lord Dundonald's crude notes, found by my agents, have put me on the track of the secret; anyhow, we are now experimenting in Charlottenburg. My experts call it a liquid perambulant fire, a hundred per cent. more efficacious than my asphyxiating gas for clearing a road through a human wall, as each cylinder is guaranteed to lay low man, beast and technical obstacle for a space of a hundred and more square feet. What do you say to that, Bertha?"
"You are wonderful, Uncle Majesty," said Bertha.
"Invincible, arm in arm with the War Lady," declaimed Wilhelm.