to
recognise the Federation as a duly constituted Power, or to have any
dealings with its leaders. "Great Britain," the reply concluded,
"will stand or fall alone; and even in the event of ultimate defeat,
the King of England will prefer to make terms with the sovereigns
opposed to him rather than with those whose acts have proved them to
be beyond the pale of the law of nations."

"Ah!" said Tremayne to Arnold, as he read the royal words, "the
policy which lost the American Colonies for the sake of an idea still
rules at Westminster, it seems. But I'm not going to let the old Lion
be strangled in his den for all that.

"Natas was right when he said that Britain would have to pass through
the fire before she would accept the Federation, and so I suppose she
must, more's the pity. Still, perhaps it will be all for the best in
the long run. You can't expect to root up a thousand-year-old oak as
easily as a mushroom that only came up the day before yesterday."

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

THE BEGINNING OF THE END.

It is now time to return to Britain, to the land which the course of
events had so far appeared to single out as the battle-ground upon
which was to be fought the Armageddon of the Western World--that
conflict of the giants, the issue of which was to decide whether the
Anglo-Saxon race was still to remain in the forefront of civilisation
and progress, or whether it was to fall, crushed and broken, beneath
the assaults of enemies descending upon the motherland of the
Anglo-Saxon nations; whether the valour and personal devotion, which
for a thousand years had scarcely known a defeat by flood or field,
was still to pursue its course of victory, or whether it was to
succumb to weight of numbers and mechanical discipline, reinforced by
means of assault and destruction which so far had turned the
world-war of 1904 into a succession of colossal and unparalleled
butcheries, such as had never been known before in the history of
human strife.

When the Allied fleets, bearing the remains of the British and German
armies which had been driven out of the Netherlands, reached England,
and the news of the crowning disaster of the war in Europe was
published in detail in the newspapers, the popular mind seemed
suddenly afflicted with a paralysis of stupefaction.

Men looked back over the long series of triumphs in which British
valour and British resolution had again and again proved themselves
invulnerable to the ass