whole thing. One never hears
a word of the others. It's lucky he's on the right side."

"And what do you think?"

Oliver turned vacant eyes again out of the window.

"I think it is touch and go," he said. "The only remarkable thing is
that here hardly anybody seems to realise it. It's too big for the
imagination, I suppose. There is no doubt that the East has been
preparing for a descent on Europe for these last five years. They have
only been checked by America; and this is one last attempt to stop them.
But why Felsenburgh should come to the front---" he broke off. "He must
be a good linguist, at any rate. This is at least the fifth crowd he has
addressed; perhaps he is just the American interpreter. Christ! I wonder
who he is."

"Has he any other name?"

"Julian, I believe. One message said so."

"How did this come through?"

Oliver shook his head.

"Private enterprise," he said. "The European agencies have stopped work.
Every telegraph station is guarded night and day. There are lines of
volors strung out on every frontier. The Empire means to settle this
business without us."

"And if it goes wrong?"

"My dear Mabel--if hell breaks loose---" he threw out his hands
deprecatingly.

"And what is the Government doing?"

"Working night and day; so is the rest of Europe. It'll be Armageddon
with a vengeance if it comes to war."

"What chance do you see?"

"I see two chances," said Oliver slowly: "one, that they may be afraid
of America, and may hold their hands from sheer fear; the other that
they may be induced to hold their hands from charity; if only they can
be made to understand that co-operation is the one hope of the world.
But those damned religions of theirs---"

The girl sighed, and looked out again on to the wide plain of
house-roofs below the window.

The situation was indeed as serious as it could be. That huge Empire,
consisting of a federalism of States under the Son of Heaven (made
possible by the merging of the Japanese and Chinese dynasties and the
fall of Russia), had been consolidating its forces and learning its own
power during the last thirty-five years, ever since, in fact, it had
laid its lean yellow hands upon Australia and India. While the rest of
the world had learned the folly of war, ever since the fall of the
Russian republic under the combined attack of the yellow races, the last
had grasped its possibilities. It seemed now as if the civilisation of
the last century