He dropped into melodramatic style, tutoyering Bertha: "Dost understand now, child, why I contemplated taking over the Krupp works for the State in case you failed your Uncle Majesty? Such would have been my duty, my sacred duty."
"I understand now, understand fully, and I humbly beg Your Majesty's pardon."
"It is granted," said the War Lord, with the air of a tyrant annulling a death sentence. "And now you want to know about the menace Dundonald's plan holds out to Essen, of course. But for your fuller understanding we must first go into the history of the case."
The War Lord lit a cigarette and settled comfortably into his throne chair. "Some two years before the battle of Leipzig," he began, "Lord Dundonald first startled the British War Office by a device for annihilating all fortified places and armies of Europe, should Bonaparte succeed in uniting them against England. However, his plan was so terrible, the Secretary for War refused to take the responsibility of either rejecting or accepting it, and persuaded the Regent to appoint a committee for its investigation en camera. The Duke of York, Lord Keith, Lord Exmouth and the two Congreves were chosen, and their verdict was: 'Infallible, irresistible, but too inhuman for consideration.' And at that time, Bertha, Englishmen and Englishwomen were hanged for stealing a sheep or an ell of cotton. So you may be sure that Lord Dundonald's war machine is no more burdened with sentimentality than 'old Fritz' yonder.
"The terrible plan was reluctantly pigeon-holed, and, as you know, Prussia, not the English, smashed Napoleon.
"In 1817 Lord Dundonald went to South America, having previously pledged his word of honour that he would not use his invention for the benefit of foreigners, and that, on the contrary, it should remain for ever at the disposal of England's War Office. Later, his lordship confessed that he had been tempted time and again to employ his invention, but refrained from self-respect.
"After 1832 he was back in London, and from then on until his death in 1860 he submitted his terrible plan to each succeeding War Minister, and each of these gentlemen declared the method capable of realisation with the awful results predicted by the author, yet too savage for adoption by a Christian government.
"Followed the Crimean War, with its initial anxieties, particularly to my grandmother. To her Lord Dundonald, then quite an old man, submitted his plan anew, which he said would shorten the war; but Queen Victoria hadn't the heart to listen to the inhuman proposal. However, Lord Palmerston had the invention officially investigated, appointing the most progressive scientists of the day for the task. As expected, they upheld Lord Dundonald's claims in every particular, but the inhumanity clause attached forbade its acceptance under a ruler like Queen Victoria, and once more the plan was shelved.
"Of course," added the War Lord, "they were fighting against Russia then. If it had been Germany, that blackguard Palmerston would have hanged the committee that declared against its acceptance.
"That happened sixty years ago," he went on, "and the British War Office has kept Dundonald's terrible plan in reserve ever since. Nor has its exact nature leaked out, though time and again one or other of the Powers have offered millions for the betrayal of the secret. Now, if I had been War Lord when Lord Dundonald was travelling in Germany—but that's neither here nor there," he added gloomily.