“Has he any other name?”

“Julian, I believe. One message said so.”

“How did this come through?”

Oliver shook his head.

“Private enterprise,” he said. “The European agencies have stopped work. Every telegraph station is guarded night and day. There are lines of volors strung out on every frontier. The Empire means to settle this business without us.”

“And if it goes wrong?”

“My dear Mabel—if hell breaks loose—-” he threw out his hands deprecatingly.

“And what is the Government doing?”

“Working night and day; so is the rest of Europe. It’ll be Armageddon with a vengeance if it comes to war.”

“What chance do you see?”

“I see two chances,” said Oliver slowly: “one, that they may be afraid of America, and may hold their hands from sheer fear; the other that they may be induced to hold their hands from charity; if only they can be made to understand that co-operation is the one hope of the world. But those damned religions of theirs—-”

The girl sighed, and looked out again on to the wide plain of house-roofs below the window.

The situation was indeed as serious as it could be. That huge Empire, consisting of a federalism of States under the Son of Heaven (made possible by the merging of the Japanese and Chinese dynasties and the fall of Russia), had been consolidating its forces and learning its own power during the last thirty-five years, ever since, in fact, it had laid its lean yellow hands upon Australia and India. While the rest of the world had learned the folly of war, ever since the fall of the Russian republic under the combined attack of the yellow races, the last had grasped its possibilities. It seemed now as if the civilisation of the last century was to be swept back once more into chaos. It was not that the mob of the East cared very greatly; it was their rulers who had begun to stretch themselves after an almost eternal lethargy, and it was hard to imagine how they could be checked 

 Prev. P 15/246 next