pt in wave after wave across the plains which
they had guarded.

The loss of life had been unparalleled even in this the greatest of
all wars, for the British and Germans had fought with a dogged
resolution which, but for the vastly superior numbers and the
irresistible means of destruction employed against them, must
infallibly have triumphed. As it was, it was only when valour had
achieved its last sacrifice, and further resistance became rather
madness than devotion, that the retreat was finally sounded in time
to embark the remnants of the armies of the Alliance on board the
warships. Happily at the very hour when this was being done the
weather broke again, and the ships of the Allied fleets were
therefore able to make their way to sea through storm and darkness,
unmolested by the war-balloons.

While the American press was teeming with columns of description
telegraphed at enormous cost from the seat of war, and with
absolutely misleading articles as to the policy of the League and the
attitude of studious neutrality that was to be observed by the United
States Government, the dockyards, controlled directly and indirectly
by the American Ring, were working night and day putting the
finishing touches to the flotilla of dynamite cruisers and other
war-vessels intended to carry out the plan revealed by Michael
Roburoff on board the _Ithuriel_, after he had been taken off the
_Aurania_ in the Mid-Atlantic.

Briefly described, this was as follows:--Representative government in
America had by this time become a complete sham. The whole political
machinery and internal resources of the United States were now
virtually at the command of a great Ring of capitalists who, through
the medium of the huge monopolies which they controlled, and the
enormous sums of money at their command, held the country in the
hollow of their hand. These men were as totally devoid of all human
feeling or public sentiment as it was possible for human beings to
be. They had grown rich in virtue of their contempt of every
principle of justice and mercy, and they had no other object in life
than to still further increase their gigantic hoards of wealth, and
to multiply the enormous powers which they already wielded. The then
condition of affairs in Europe had presented them with such an
opportunity as no other combination of circumstances could have given
them, and ignoring, as such wretches would naturally do, all ties of
blood and kindred sp