ff reflected.

Nigel was deep in thought. China, Russia, Germany! Prince Shan in
England, negotiating with Immelan! And behind, sinister, menacing,
mysterious--Japan!

"Supposing," he propounded at last, "there really does exist a secret
treaty between China and Japan?"

"If there is," Prince Karschoff observed, "one can easily understand
what Immelan has been at. Prince Shan can command the whole of Asia. I
know they are afraid of something of the sort in the States. An American
who was in the club yesterday told us they had spent over a hundred
millions on their west coast fortifications in the last two years."

"One can understand, too, in that case," Nigel continued, "why Japan
left the League of Nations. That stunt of hers about being outside the
sphere of possible misunderstandings never sounded honest."

"It was unfortunate," Prince Karschoff said, "that America was dominated
for those few months by an honest but impractical idealist. He had the
germ of an idea, but he thrust it on the world before even his own
country was ready for it. In time the nations would certainly have
elaborated something more workable."

"You cannot keep a full-blooded man from clenching his fist if he's
insulted," Nigel pointed out, "and nations march along the same lines as
individuals. Its existence has never for a single moment weakened
Germany's hatred of England, and the stronger she grows, the more she
flaunts its conditions. France guards her frontiers, night and day, with
an army ten times larger than she is allowed. Russia has become the
country of mysteries, with something up her sleeve, beyond a doubt, and
there are cities in modern China into which no European dare penetrate.
Japan quite frankly maintains an immense army, the United States is
silently following suit--and God help us all if a war does come!"

"You are right," Karschoff assented gloomily. "The last glamour of
romance has gone from fighting. There were remnants of it in the last
war, especially in Palestine and Egypt and when we first overran
Austria. To-day, science would settle the whole affair. The war would be
won in the laboratory, the engine room and the workshop. I doubt
whether any battleship could keep afloat for a week, and as to the
fighting in the air, if a hundred airships were in action, I do not
suppose that one of them would escape. Then they say that France has a
gun which could carry a shell from Amiens to London, and more mysterious