ally certain, indeed proved to demonstration, that
the forces at the command of the British Government were not capable
of coping with those brought against them by the commanders of the
League, and that therefore Britain, if left to her own resources,
must inevitably succumb, and submit to such terms as her conquerors
might think fit to impose upon her. The choice before the British
Government thus lay between surrender to her foreign enemies, whose
objects were well known to be dismemberment of the Empire and the
reduction of Great Britain to the rank of a third-class Power,--to
say nothing of the payment of a war indemnity which could not fail to
be paralysing,--and the consent of those who controlled the destinies
of the mother country to accept a Federation of the whole Anglo-Saxon
race, to waive the merely national idea in favour of the racial one,
and to permit the Executive Council of the Federation to assume those
governmental functions which were exercised at present by the King
and the British Houses of Parliament.

In a word, the choice lay between conquest by a league of foreign
powers and the merging of Britain into the Federation of the
English-speaking peoples of the world.

If the former choice were taken, the only prospect possible under the
condition of things was a possibly enormous sacrifice of human life
on the side of both Britain and its enemies, a gigantic loss in
money, the crippling of British trade and commerce, and then a
possible, nay probable, social revolution to which the message
distinctly pointed.

If the latter choice were taken, the forces of the Federation would
be at once brought into the field against those of the League, the
siege of London would be raised, the power of the invaders would be
effectually broken for ever, and the stigma of conquest finally wiped
away.

It is only just to record the fact that in this supreme crisis of
British history the man who most strongly insisted upon the
acceptance of the terms which he had previously, as he now confessed
in the most manly and outspoken fashion, rejected in ignorance of the
true situation of affairs, was the man who believed that he would
lose a crown by accepting them.

When the Ambassador of the Federation had been presented to the
Council, the King rose in his place and handed to him with his own
hands a sealed letter, saying as he did so--

"Mr. Mazanoff, I am still to a great extent in ignorance as to the
inexpli