and sea? These military preparations,
whilst not only redounding to the advantage of the motherland, but also
to that of the colonies (which they shall ever continue to do) have
saddled the mother country with the entire burden of expenditure. But
how shall the enormous cost of this war be met for the future? How shall
the commerce of the English world-empire be increased in the future and
protected from competition, if the colonies do not share in the expense?
I vote for a just distribution of the burdens, and maintain that not
England alone but that the colonies also should share in bearing them.
The plan of Imperial Federation, a policy which we are pursuing, is the
remedy for our chronic disease, and will strengthen the colonies and the
mother country in economic, political, and military respects. Certainly,
my lords, such utterances will appear to you to be somewhat impertinent,
at a time when a Russian army has invaded India and our army has
suffered a severe defeat, but I should wish to remind you that every war
that England has yet waged has begun with defeats. But England has never
waged other than victorious wars since William the Conqueror infused
Romanic blood into England's political life and thus gave it a
constitution of such soundness and tenacity that no other body politic
has ever been able permanently to resist England. We shall again, as in
days of yore, drive the Russians out of India, shall force the fleets
of France, Germany, and Russia who are now hiding in their harbours
into the open, annihilate them, and thwart all the insolent plans of our
enemies, and finally raise the Union Jack as a standard of a world-power
that no one will for evermore be able to attack."

XVIII

THE YOUNG RUSSIAN CAPTAIN OF DRAGOONS

The news of Edith's kidnapping--for, in Heideck's opinion, this was the
only explanation, because she would otherwise have left a message for
him--fell upon Heideck as a crushing blow.

He remembered the terrible cruelties narrated of the period of the Sepoy
mutiny. And he only needed to remember his own experiences in Lahore to
be convinced that all those horrible stories were no exaggeration, but,
rather, well within the actual truth of the facts.

But if it was not a like fate that awaited Edith Irwin, yet perhaps
another ignominious lot would be hers, and this could not fail to
appear, to the man who loved her, more terrible even than death itself.

His alarm and deep desp