The money indemnity demanded by General von Füchter was the largest ever known: one thousand million pounds sterling. But it must be remembered that the enemy already held the Bank of England. One hundred millions, or securities representing that amount, were to be handed over within twenty-four hours. The remaining nine hundred millions were to be paid in nine annual instalments of one hundred millions each, the first of which must be paid within three months. Until the last payment was made, German troops were to occupy Glasgow, Cardiff, Portsmouth, Devonport, Chatham, Yarmouth, Harwich, Hull, and Newcastle. The Transvaal was to be ceded to the Boers under a German Protectorate. Britain was to withdraw all pretensions regarding Egypt and Morocco, and to cede to Germany, Gibraltar, Malta, Ceylon, and British West Africa.
It is not necessary for me to quote the few further details of the most exacting demands a victor ever made upon a defeated enemy. There can be no doubt that, in the disastrous circumstances they had been so largely instrumental in bringing about, "The Destroyers" had no choice, no alternative from their acceptance of these crushing terms.
And thus it was that—not at the end of a long and hard-fought war, as the result of vast misfortunes or overwhelming valour on the enemy's side, but simply as the result of the condition of utter and lamentable defencelessness into which a truckling Government and an undisciplined, blindly selfish people had allowed England to lapse—the greatest, wealthiest Power in civilization was brought to its knees in the incredibly short space of one week, by the sudden but scientifically devised onslaught of a single ambitious nation, ruled by a monarch whose lack of scruples was more than balanced by his strength of purpose.
XXI
ENGLAND ASLEEP
Evil springs up, and flowers, and bears no seed,
And feeds the green earth with its swift decay,
Leaving it richer for the growth of truth.
Lowell.
General von Füchter and his splendidly trained troops were not the only people in England for whom the mere fatigue of that week was something not easily to be forgotten. My impression of its last three days is that they brought no period of rest for any one. I know that there were as many people in the streets by night as by day. The act of going within doors or sitting down, seemed in some way to be a kind of cowardice, a species of shirking, or disloyalty.
I remember Constance Grey assuring me that she had lain down for an hour on Thursday. I can say with certainty that we were both of us on our feet from that time until after the terms of the surrender were made known on Saturday evening. I can also say that no thought of this matter of physical weariness occurred to me until that period of Saturday evening—soon after seven o'clock it was—when the proclamations were posted up in Whitehall, and the special issues of the newspapers containing the peace announcements began to be hawked.