to face invading forces which would certainly not number less than
a million, every man of which had served his apprenticeship to the grim
trade of war, commanded by officers who had taken that same trade
seriously, studied it as a science, thinking it of considerably more
importance than golf or cricket or football.

It had been said that the British Nation would never tolerate
conscription, which might or might not have been true; but now, when the
next hour or so might hear the foreign drums thrumming and the foreign
bugles blaring, conscription looked a very different thing. There wasn't
a loyal man in the kingdom who didn't bitterly regret that he had not
been taken in the prime of his young manhood, and taught how to defend
the hearth and home which were his, and the wife and children which were
so dear to him.

But it was too late now. Neither soldiers nor sharpshooters are made in
a few hours or days, and within a week the first battles that had been
fought on English ground for nearly eight hundred years would have been
lost and won, and nine-tenths of the male population of England would be
looking on in helpless fury.

There had been plenty of theorists, who had said that the British
Islands needed no army of home defence, simply because if she once lost
command of the sea it would not be necessary for an enemy to invade her,
since a blockade of her ports would starve her into submission in a
month--which, thanks to the decay of agriculture and the depopulation of
the country districts, was true enough. But it was not all the truth.
Those who preached these theories left out one very important factor,
and that was human nature.

For over a century the Continental nations had envied and hated Britain,
the land-grabber; Britain who had founded nations while they had failed
to make colonies; Britain, who had made the Seven Seas her territories,
and the coasts of other lands her frontiers. Surely the leaders of the
leagued nations would have been more or less than human had they
resisted, even if their people had allowed them to do it, the
temptation of trampling these proud Islanders into the mud and mire of
their own fields and highways, and dictating terms of peace in the
ancient halls of Windsor.

These were the bitter thoughts which were rankling in the breast of
every loyal British man during the remainder of that night of horrible
suspense. Many still had reason to remember the ghastly blunders and t