Brown."

"You come here as a friend of England?" the latter asked.

"I come here as one who hesitates to become her enemy," was the measured
reply. "I will be perfectly frank with you, sir. I came to this country
to discuss a project which, with the acquiescence of China and Japan,
would have resulted in the humiliation of your country and the
gratification of Germany's eagerly desired revenge."

"You believe in the existence of that sentiment, then?" the Prime
Minister enquired.

"Any one short of a very insular Englishman," the Prince replied, "would
have realised it long ago. There is a great society in Germany, scarcely
even a secret society, pledged to wipe out the humiliations of the last
great war. Lord Dorminster tells me that you are to-day without a secret
service. For that reason you have remained in ignorance of the mines
beneath your feet. Germany has laid her plans well and carefully. Her
first and greatest weapon has been your sense of security. She has seen
you contemplate with an ill-advised smile of spurious satisfaction,
invincible France, regaining her wealth more slowly than you for the
simple reason that half the man power of the country is absorbed by her
military preparations. France is impregnable. A direct invasion of your
country is in all probability impossible. Those two facts have seemed to
you all-sufficient. That is where you have been, if I may say so, sir,
very short-sighted."

"Germany has no power to transport troops in other directions," Mr.
Mervin Brown observed.

Prince Shan smiled.

"You have another enemy besides Germany," he pointed out, "a great
democracy who has never forgiven your lack of sympathy at her birth,
your attempts to repress by force a great upheaval, borne in agony and
shame, yet containing the germs of worthy things which your statesmen in
those days failed to discern. Russia has never forgiven. Russia stands
hand in hand with Germany."

"But surely," the Prime Minister protested, "you speak in the language
of the past? The League of Nations still exists. Any directly predatory
expedition would bring the rest of the world to arms."

Prince Shan shook his head.

"One of the first necessities of a tribunal," he expounded, "is that
that tribunal should have the power to punish. You yourself are one of
the judges. You might find your culprit guilty. With what weapon will
you chastise him? The culprit has grown mightier than the judge."

"America--"