Olga Romanoff

by George Chetwynd Griffith

The news of the alliance between Olga and the Sultan had acted like a trumpet-call to battle on the proud and martial spirit of the Aerians. Generation after generation their young men had been trained in the arts of war as well as in those of peace, for the wisdom of their ancestors had foreseen that, in the ordinary progress of science, it was impossible for many generations to pass without some independent solution of the problem of aerial navigation, which must, sooner or later, result in a challenge of their supremacy.

Consequently, all through the years of profound peace which the outside world had enjoyed under their rule, their vigilance had never slept for a moment, and their men and ships and materials of war were kept in the highest possible state of efficiency. Thus, though the Aerian nation numbered little more than a million souls, inhabiting a territory of some two hundred and fifty square miles, the amount of effective strength that it was able to put forth on an emergency was totally disproportionate to its size.

Living in a region of inexhaustible fertility and boundless mineral wealth, with no idle or mere consuming classes, no politics, and no laws that a child of ten could not understand, they led simple, natural, and busy lives, accumulating immense public and private riches, which were as constantly expended in increasing the splendour and power of the State, which, as a whole, was the expression of the wealth and patriotism of its citizens.

No sooner had the alliance of their enemies become an accomplished fact than they devoted the whole of their vast resources to increasing their offensive and defensive armaments to the utmost of their power. Reserves of material that had been stored up year after year had been drawn upon, the mighty natural forces that they had brought into subjection laboured night and day for them, and ships and machinery and guns came into existence as though at the bidding of some race of magicians.

Magazines were filled with immense stores of ammunition, potential death and destruction such as had never been wielded by human hands before—and commanders and officers for all the battleships of the Federation had been sent out as each squadron of vessels was completed.

In a word, Aeria had donned her panoply of war, and stood armed at all points, ready to fight the world if necessary in defence of the priceless heritage which its citizens had received from their fathers, the giants who in the days of the Terror had taken despotism and oppression by the throat and flung them headlong out of the world.

The defences of Aeria were to be under the immediate command of the President. All the oceanic stations, save Kerguelen, Teneriffe, Bermuda, and Hawaii, had been abandoned so as to permit of greater concentration of forces, while fifty new ones had been established in different parts of Europe and the British Islands, for here the brunt of the attack was to be expected, and here the enemy must be met and crushed if Anglo-Saxon civilisation was to be saved from a new era of militarism and personal oppression.

Alan and Alexis were to take command of the Western and Eastern fleets into which the aerial forces were to be divided, Alan in the West with Britain as his chief base of operation, and Alexis in the East with the Balkan Peninsula as his base between the Russian and Moslem headquarters.

The naval fleets, in three divisions, the Atlantic, Mediterranean, and Pacific squadrons, had already received their general instructions, and were waiting at their various rendezvous for the outbreak of hostilities. The Atlantic squadron blocked the Straits of Gibraltar, the Narrow Seas of Britain, and the approaches to the Baltic, the Mediterranean division patrolled the Inland Sea from Gibraltar to Cyprus, and the Pacific fleet were blockading the southern approach to the Red Sea, ready to operate against any junction of the Indian and African sea forces of the Sultan.