"And the dream of my little girl need not be abandoned, either," added the War Lord in softer tones, "for the telegram to King George will further stipulate that the Dundonald secret must be turned over to me, and that I will have a hundred hostages to guarantee my absolute monopoly of this war machine—all the living war ministers and the heads of the families of the war ministers for the last hundred years, with a sprinkling of dukes, princes, high statesmen and low politicians to boot. Lady Warwick has sometimes wondered what the English nobility is good for—I'll show her.
"The Dundonald secret in my exclusive keeping," concluded Wilhelm, "you can devote the Krupp plant in all future to the ideals of the pacifists; for the world, awed into submission and silence lest I make a vast Pompeii out of a rebel country—the world will be mine!"
With the War Lady's astonished eyes following him as he strode the length and breadth of the room, the War Lord chuckled to himself. "Lord Dundonald's crude notes, found by my agents, have put me on the track of the secret; anyhow, we are now experimenting in Charlottenburg. My experts call it a liquid perambulant fire, a hundred per cent. more efficacious than my asphyxiating gas for clearing a road through a human wall, as each cylinder is guaranteed to lay low man, beast and technical obstacle for a space of a hundred and more square feet. What do you say to that, Bertha?"
"You are wonderful, Uncle Majesty," said Bertha.
"Invincible, arm in arm with the War Lady," declaimed Wilhelm.
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*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SECRET MEMOIRS OF BERTHA KRUPP ***