s in favour of its
Executive.

The refusal of those terms had now cost more than a million British
lives, and an incalculable amount of human suffering and destruction
of property. Until the news of the disaster of Dover had actually
reached London, no one had really believed that it was possible for
an invading force to land on British soil and exist for twenty-four
hours. Now the impossible had been made possible, and the last
crushing blow must fall within the next few days. After that who knew
what might befall?

So far as could be seen, Britain lay helpless at the mercy of her
foes. Her allies had ceased to exist as independent Powers, and the
Russian and the Gaul were thundering at her gates as, fifteen hundred
years before, the Goth had thundered at the gates of the Eternal City
in the last days of the Roman Empire.

If the terms of the Federation could have been offered again, it is
probable that the King of England would have been the first man to
own his mistake and that of his advisers and accept them, for now the
choice lay between utter and humiliating defeat and the breaking up
of the Empire, and the recognition of the Federation. After all, the
kinship of a race was a greater fact in the supreme hour of national
disaster than the maintenance of a dynasty or the perpetuation of a
particular form of government.

It was not now a question of nation against nation, but of race
against race. The fierce flood of war had swept away all smaller
distinctions. It was necessary to rise to the altitude of the problem
of the Government, not of nations, but of the world. Was the genius
of the East or of the West to shape the future destinies of the human
race? That was the mighty problem of which the events of the next few
weeks were to work out the solution, for when the sun set on the
Field of Armageddon the fate of Humanity would be fixed for centuries
to come.

CHAPTER XLI.

AN ENVOY OF DELIVERANCE.

From the time that the Tsar had received the conditional declaration
of war from the President of the Anglo-Saxon Federation in America to
nightfall on the 29th of November, when the surrender of the capital
of the British Empire was considered to be a matter of a few days
only, the Commander-in-Chief of the forces of the League was
absolutely in the dark, not only as to the actual intentions of the
Terrorists, if they had any, but also as to the doings of his allies
in America.

According to the s