Thus the brain would be destroyed and the body reduced to impotence; disciplined armies would become lawless and unregulated hordes in a few days or weeks, and the organised slaughter of the battlefield would be exchanged for the butchery and plunder of the city carried by assault.
It was little wonder, then, that the world watched the ending of its last night of peace and the dawning of its first day of battle with feelings such as men had not felt for five generations, if, indeed, ever before in the history of man.
It was not a mere war of nations with which men were confronted. The evil genius of a single woman had achieved the unheard-of feat of dividing the human race into two hostile forces so nearly balanced in strength that mutual destruction seemed a not improbable issue of what might after all prove to be the death-struggle of humanity, the collapse of civilisation and the sinking of a remnant of mankind back to the level of barbarians whose children would wander amidst the ruins of their forefathers’ habitations, and wonder what race of demigods had created the wondrous fabrics whose very fragments were splendid.
As the dawn flew round the world on that momentous morning every eye was turned towards the heavens, on every lip there was but one question: Where will the first blow be struck? and in every heart there was but one thought: Will it reach me or my dear ones?
The focus of all human interest was for a moment Alexandria, for it was known that from there the main expeditionary force was to be sent out to, if possible, effect a landing on the shores of Italy, while other expeditions were to start from Tripoli, Tunis, and Oran to effect landings in France and Spain. The bridge across the Straits of Gibraltar from Point Cires to Gualdamesi was to all intents and purposes neutral, since it would have been madness to send trains conveying troops across it when a single shot from the British battery at Gibraltar would have shattered the bridge to fragments.
The forces destined by the Sultan for the invasion of Europe would, therefore, either have to be conveyed in swift transports by sea, protected by squadrons of air-ships and flotillas of submarine battleships, or else they would have to go by land round the Levant by Syria, and so through Asia Minor to the shores of the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus.
As the European shores of these two straits were known to be defended by concealed batteries mounting guns a single shot from which would blow the biggest transport afloat out of the water, the Sultan had decided to make the attempt to invade Italy, France, and Spain by sea, while the Russian forces, with their Asiatic allies, were to attack the central nations from the east.
So far, therefore, as could be foreseen, the Mediterranean would once more be the arena of strife, and on some part of its shores or its waters the first blow of the war would be struck. Every possible preparation for the attack upon Europe had been finally completed immediately after the return of Khalid from the coronation of Olga on the 11th, but beyond the fact that the coasts of Europe, from the Straits of Dover to the Golden Horn, were patrolled by Federation battleships, nothing was known of the dispositions which had been made for the defence of Europe.
Gibraltar, Minorca, Cape Spartivento, Mount Ida in Candia and Olympus in Cyprus formed a chain of Federation posts which, while they had been made impregnable to all attack save long-sustained bombardment from the air, rendered any attempt on the part of large fleets to cross the Mediterranean an extremely hazardous venture.