A certain Senator Hiram P. Dexter, a Prince of Tammany, who had become President of the United States, crystallised the idea thus:
"England had colonised America. Why should not America re-colonise depopulated Ireland. She could then dominate her former senior partner in the ancient British firm and make things hum!"
The idea was "cute," inspiring. Nevertheless, it was certain that, however anxious she might be for peace and quietness, Britannia could never tolerate another flag so near to her own centre of government. The line must be drawn somewhere. Hiram P. Dexter and his friends realised that for dominion in Ireland, even under the Jardine dispensation and in the reign of woman, England must needs fight, fight to the bitter end; unless, indeed, by some master-stroke of policy and daring she could first be disabled by the strong man armed.
Hence the plan of campaign—by unscrupulous strategy to seize the key of the castle, the stronghold of Dover; while, at the same time, the squadrons of the two Eagles menaced the coast of Ireland itself and landed troops at various points.
It was an infamy; it was a dastardly and fratricidal act; it was a combination worthy of Herod and Pilate! All these things were said. But history is not made or unmade by the aid of epithets. History reckons with great national forces, race problems, and the bed-rock of accomplished facts. Abundant precedents could have been cited, and nothing succeeds likes success. In this case, if the attempt should fail, it might be explained away as the mad raid of a band of freebooters. Those who survived might be nominally called to account, just as had happened fifty years earlier after the futile raid of a certain Dr. Jameson, and others, when one Kruger was "King" of the Transvaal. In either event, whatever England might think and say of this stab in the back, there were millions in the States who would applaud the blow as smart beyond anything that had ever been attempted by American Presidents, and Hiram P. Dexter would go down to posterity as a Napoleon of enterprise—the man who realised that even America was not big enough in these mid-century days for the mixed peoples of the States; that the dominant race in that massed population needed more room to turn round in; more scope for hustling; fresh fields and pastures new for the feverish multiplication of the almighty dollar.
But there was another nation to be reckoned with.
The two greatest competitors for world-power and commerce were Germany and America. And Germany and America did not want to fight—at present. A system of mutual concessions—with mental reservations—better suited the provisional purposes of Berlin and Washington, at any rate for the time being. Clearly, nothing could be done by way of aggression in Europe without taking Germany into account. So the business-like President of the States had engineered with the Germans what brokers and auctioneers describe as a big "knock-out." They had come to an understanding—about England—an understanding provisional and tentative.
Again, thirty years ago Englishmen would have scouted such an idea. But nothing stands still. We ripe and ripe, and then from hour to hour we rot and rot. So also with the Empires of the world. The law of the survival of the fittest operates in all created things. Britain herself had been one of the chief exponents of this immutable law. Not by means of Peace Conferences and a tentative reduction of armaments, coupled with pious platitudes concerning methods of barbarism—otherwise War—had her great Empire been built up. With the strong hand, in past times, we had belaboured effete and wealthy Spain. With force of arms we had driven from the seas Holland—once our great and powerful rival for the trade of the world. We had humbled Napoleon and the pride of France on the field of Waterloo. India had been taken with the sword. With shot and shell and reeking bayonet these and other things were done. And as we had done unto others, by reason of the necessities of national existence, so might we rationally have expected that others in their turn would do unto us.
History, though in our self-absorption we forget it, is full of dramatic surprises, and suddenly develops startling situations. The rise of Japan had been a staggering surprise—both for Europe and America, and, indeed, had become a great factor in the latest departure of American policy. There had been other shocks, and there were more to follow. Over all the white nations there hung a dark and ominous shadow, ever increasing, caused by the rise and rapid expansion of the yellow and black. The East was filling up, and inasmuch as Great Britain still held much coveted territory in the West, and had money in her banks, it was around and against the British Isles that the Spirit of Annexation still watchfully hovered—ready to pounce.
The raid at Dover—whether failing or succeeding—therefore must be viewed as a sign, a lurid, awful sign, of altered times. The hour was well chosen. Nicholas Jardine, the Man of the People, lay dead. The nation was in the throes of a domestic crisis, the Champion of the Women straining every nerve to take the dead President's place, and pursue a programme which would satisfy the special aspirations of her sex.