Olga Romanoff

by George Chetwynd Griffith

The lord of seven hundred million subjects who, even in those days, so strong was still the faith and loyalty of the Moslem, looked upon him only as something less than Allah and the Prophet whose sacred blood flowed in his veins, his soaring ambition was not content even with the splendid inheritance that he had received from his ancestors.

In his being were closely blended those elements of religious enthusiasm and worldly ambition which had made the men of the Golden Age of Islam such irresistible conquerors and such mighty rulers of men. He had pondered over the past history of his faith and his people from the times of the Prophet down to his own, until he had come to believe himself the man chosen by Destiny to subjugate the world, and to compel all men, from pole to pole, and east to west, to accept the rule and faith of Islam, and to confess the unity of God and the apostleship of Mohammed.

He saw in the vast area of the Anglo-Saxon Federation, which now, in name at least, dominated Europe, America, and Australasia, only a collection of democratic and ill-governed States in which the mob ruled by blind counting of heads, and in which religion had been refined into a mere philosophy of life and morals, the last word of which seemed to him to be: Make the best of to-day, lest to-morrow should never come.

In his own breast the flame of the fierce, uncompromising faith of Islam burnt, undimmed by the mists of the centuries that had passed since the first Moslem armies had emerged from the deserts of Arabia to conquer the greater part of the Roman world.

Why should he not send forth his armies, as the Khalifs of old had done, to plant the banner of the Crescent over the subjugated realms of Christendom, and rule, the greatest of the Commanders of the Faithful, sovereign lord of a Moslem world?

It was a splendid destiny, but there was a power in the world, located in one tiny spot of earth, and yet, so far as he knew, universal and irresistible, before which the armies which he had called into existence would be as helpless as a swarm of locusts before a forest fire.

This power possessed the empire of the air, and therefore of the earth. In the days of the Terror it had led the Anglo-Saxon race to the conquest of the world. Would it sit idly now behind the bulwarks of Aeria and watch his armies conquering the domains of Anglo-Saxondom?

Was it not far more likely that those terrible air-ships would be sent forth to hurl their destroying lightnings from the skies and overwhelm his armies and his cities in irretrievable ruin? These Aerians had ruled the world for a hundred and twenty-five years, and yet had committed no act of aggression upon the rightful liberties of any nation. How, therefore, could he believe that they would hold their mighty hand while he carried fire and sword through the habitations of their blood and kindred?

If he gave the word for war, within forty-eight hours after he had spoken more than ten millions of men, armed with weapons of fearful precision and destructive power, would stand ready to do his bidding and to carry the banner of the Crescent to the uttermost ends of the earth; but of what use would be their numbers, their valour, or their devotion with a squadron of aerial cruisers wheeling above them and hurling death and destruction upon them from the inaccessible heights of the sky?

He remembered how his ancestor Mohammed Reshad had been stopped in his career of conquest, and how his victorious armies had been decimated and thrown into confusion by a flotilla of air-ships and war-balloons which a dozen cruisers of the present Aerian navy would have swept from the skies in a few minutes. Intolerable as the thought was to his haughty soul, the truth remained that, in the midst of all his power and splendour, he was as helpless as a child before the real masters of the world. He had armies and fleets, but he could not make war without their permission or the assurance of their neutrality, save with the certainty of disaster and defeat.