"Why the devil don't you speak? Who are you?"
Then, at last, came an intelligible response—in English with a strong American intonation:
"Guess you'd better come and see!"
How and why had this dastardly combined attack on England come to pass? The story can be briefly told. Great Britain had long been regarded by America as old and stricken in years—not merely as the old country, but as a country that was in its dotage—old and played out. America was young and lusty, and quite persuaded that the old folk at home were too feeble to retain the management of the old Estate. Already the United States, in the scramble for British possessions, had pocketed some nice little pickings. The West Indian Islands, the Bermudas and British Guiana, had been virtually surrendered to Washington. England for years, but in vain, had sought to placate this big and blustering branch of the ancient race whenever family friction had arisen. Again and again weaker members of the clan, poor relations, like Newfoundland, had been sacrificed to the demands of the United States. But some appetites are insatiable, some ambitions unbounded. A new order of American politicians had arisen, men who aimed at a great federation of the Anglo-Saxon race, with America not as the junior partner, but as the head and ruling spirit of that federation. When the possessor of a great estate becomes imbecile or lapses into second childhood his affairs are taken out of his hands—for his own good and for the due protection of his solicitous relations. That, argued the plotters, was just what was needed in the case of Great Britain. The indications of decrepitude had been slowly but, to keen observers, convincingly manifested during a period of more than thirty years. Thirty years ago Englishmen would have scouted the idea of an American invasion, or the idea of America in alliance with Germany against Great Britain. Monstrous! Was not blood thicker than water? Were not the American people our own kith and kin? Yes, but times had changed, while human nature had remained the same. America had become a cosmopolitan country. From all parts of Europe—and especially from Germany—men had emigrated to the United States. Thither, too, swarms of the yellow from China and Japan, had insidiously made their way in spite of opposition; and year after year the black population of the great continent had enormously increased, while the Anglo-Saxon birth-rate had rapidly declined. The British element in America thus had been absorbed, submerged. The old and consolatory theory of family ties, like other popular fallacies fondly cherished in spite of the march of events, at last had been convincingly exploded by the raid on Dover.
Signs of the coming times had not been wanting. England, fearing a German invasion, had kept her fleets in home waters. The great scheme of Imperial Defence, much discussed in 1909, had not been perfected. As far back as the earthquake of 1906 in Jamaica, the growing inability of England to look after her outlying possessions had been strikingly instanced. No British Squadron was near at hand in that hour of trial to succour the afflicted islanders. Was it not an American, not an English, Admiral who had come to the rescue of the British colony? Had not the English Governor been summarily suppressed by the Home Government because he had ventured sarcastically to point out that American assistance, however kindly meant, was not required, and had not been regulated by the accepted law of nations?
From that day forth—and there had been other similar examples—the more enterprising politicians of Washington took an increasing interest in British affairs, and dreamed dreams in which the old familiar colours on the map of the world—where once upon a time red was so predominant—underwent some radical and striking alterations.
Of course, there was one part of the British dominions, and that very near to the centre of British Government, in which America had taken the closest interest for more than a century. There was Ireland, the emigrated population of which had become part of the mixed population of the United States. The Irish vote, moreover, had become of increasing importance to those who wished to hold the helm at Washington; and, in truth, it was the old and long cherished idea of planting the American standard on Irish soil that gradually had led up to this daring exploit, the news of which the great guns of Fort Warden were booming out to all the world.
It was not really surprising that men with so marked an aptitude for commercial enterprise as the American wire-pullers should have turned covetous eyes towards the Isle of Erin. Ireland was the great junction for the ship-line between the Old Country and the New, an unexploited island of noble harbours, rich in mountain, lake, and river.