Britain. Karolides’ death would set the Balkans by the ears, and then Vienna

would chip in with an ultimatum. Russia wouldn’t like that, and there would be

high words. But Berlin would play the peacemaker, and pour oil on the waters,

till suddenly she would find a good cause for a quarrel, pick it up, and in five

hours let fly at us.

 

That was the idea, and a pretty good one too. Honey and fair speeches, and then

a stroke in the dark. While we were talking about the goodwill and good

intentions of Germany our coast would be silently ringed with mines, and

submarines would be waiting for every battleship.

 

But all this depended upon the third thing, which was due to happen on June

15th. I would never have grasped this if I hadn’t once happened to meet a French

staff officer, coming back from West Africa, who had told me a lot of things.

One was that, in spite of all the nonsense talked in Parliament, there was a

real working alliance between France and Britain, and that the two General

Staffs met every now and then, and made plans for joint action in case of war.

Well, in June a very great swell was coming over from Paris, and he was going to

get nothing less than a statement of the disposition of the British Home Fleet

on mobilization. At least I gathered it was something like that; anyhow, it was

something uncommonly important.

 

But on the 15th day of June there were to be others in London—others, at whom I

could only guess. Scudder was content to call them collectively the “Black

Stone”. They represented not our Allies, but our deadly foes; and the