"Nevertheless," Nigel persisted, "I should send for Prince Shan. If it had not been," he went on slowly, "for the complete abolition of our secret service system, you would probably have been informed before now that Prince Shan has been having continual conferences in this country with one of the most dangerous men who ever set foot on these shores—Oscar Immelan."
"Immelan has no official position in this country," the Prime Minister objected.
"A fact which makes him none the less dangerous," Nigel insisted. "He is one of those free lances of diplomacy who have sprung up during the last ten or fifteen years, the product of that spurious wave of altruism which is responsible for the League of Nations. Immelan was one of the first to see how his country might benefit by the new régime. It is he who has been pulling the strings in Russia and China, and, I fear, another country."
"What I want to arrive at," Mr. Mervin Brown said, a little impatiently, "is something definite."
"Let me put it my own way," Nigel begged. "A very large section of our present-day politicians—you, if I may say so, amongst them, Mr. Mervin Brown—have believed this country safe against any military dangers, because of the connections existing between your unions of working men and similar bodies in Germany. This is a great fallacy for two reasons: first because Germany has always intended to have some one else pull the chestnuts out of the fire for her, and second because we cannot internationalise labour. English and German workmen may come together on matters affecting their craft and the conditions of their labour, but at heart one remains a German and one an Englishman, with separate interests and a separate outlook."
"Well, at the end of it all," Mr. Mervin Brown said, "the bogey is war. What sort of a war? An invasion of England is just as impossible to-day as it was twenty years ago."
Nigel nodded.
"I cannot answer your question," he admitted. "I was looking to Jesson's report to give us an idea as to that."
"You shall see it to-morrow," Mr. Mervin Brown promised. "It is round at the War Office at the present moment."
"Without seeing it," Nigel went on, "I expect I can tell you one startling feature of its contents. It suggested, did it not, that the principal movers against us would be Russian and China and—a country which you prefer just now not to mention?"