“A fine mess!—no troops, nothing to arm them with, no modern artillery, no preparations; the Boche growing more insolent, more murderous, but slyer; a row on with Mexico, another brewing with Japan, all Europe and Great Britain regarding us with contempt—I ask you, can you beat it, Garry? Are there any lower depths for us?—any sub-cellars of iniquity into which we can tumble, like the basket of jelly-fish we seem to be!”
“It’s a nightmare,” said Barres. “Since Liège and the Lusitania, it’s been a bad dream getting worse. We’ll have to wake, you know. If we don’t, we’re of no more substance than the dream itself:—we are the dream, and we’ll end like one.”
“I’m going to wait a bit longer,” said Westmore restlessly, “and if there’s nothing doing, it’s me for the other side.”
“For me, too, Jim.”
“Is it a bargain?”
“Certainly.... I’d rather go under my own flag, of course.... We’ll see how this Boche backdown turns out. I don’t think it will last. I believe the Huns have been stirring up the Mexicans. It wouldn’t surprise me if they were at the bottom of the Japanese menace. But what angers me is to think that we have received with innocent hospitality these hundreds of 193 thousands of Huns in America, and that now, all over the land, this vast, acclimated nest of snakes rises hissing at us, menacing us with their filthy fangs!”
“Thank God our police is still half Irish,” growled Westmore, puffing at his pipe. “These dirty swine might try to rush the city if war comes while the Guard is away.”
“They’re doing enough damage as it is,” said Barres, “with their traitorous press, their pacifists, their agents everywhere inciting labour to strike, teaching disorganisation, combining commercially, directing blackmail, bomb outrages, incendiaries, and infesting the Republic with a plague of spies——”
The studio bell rang sharply. Barres, who stood near the door, opened it.
“Thessa!” he exclaimed, astonished and delighted.