to lend
sensational interest to its columns, had not minimized in any way the
startling character of such intelligence as it had received.

"The bloodthirsty German devils!" said Blaine, the erstwhile apostle of
internationalism and the socialistic brotherhood of man. "By God, the
Admiralty and the War Office ought to swing for this! Here are we taxed
out of house and home to support their wretched armies and navies, and
German soldiers marching on London, they say, with never a sign of a
hand raised to oppose 'em--damn them! Nice time you choose to talk of
leaving. By God, Mordan, you may be leaving from against a wall with a
bullet through your head, next thing you know. These German devils don't
wear kid gloves, I fancy. They're not like our tin-pot army. Army!--we
haven't got one--lot of gold-laced puppets!"

That was how Clement Blaine was moved by the news. Last week: "Bloated
armaments," "huge battalions of idle men eating the heart out of the
nation through its revenues." This week, we had no army, and because of
it the Admiralty and the War Office ought to "swing." In Blaine's
ravings I had my foretaste of public opinion on the crisis.

On the previous day I had listened to a prominent Member of Parliament
urging that our children should be preserved from the contamination of
contact with those who taught the practice of the "hellish art" of
shooting.

The leading daily papers of this Monday morning admitted the central
fact that England had been invaded during Saturday night, and even
allowed readers to assume that portions of the eastern counties were
then occupied by "foreign" troops. But they used the word "raid" in
place of "invasion," and generally qualified it with such a word as
"futile." The general tone was that a Power with whom we had believed
ourselves to be upon friendly terms had been guilty of rash and
provocative action toward us, which it would speedily be made to regret.
It was an insult, which would be promptly avenged; full atonement for
which would be demanded and obtained at once. It was even suggested that
some tragic misunderstanding would be found to lie at the root of the
whole business; and in any case, things were to be set right without
delay. One journal, the _Standard_, did go so far as to say that the
British public was likely to be forced now into learning at great cost a
lesson which had been offered daily as a free gift since the opening of
the century, and as steadily re