“Aha, he is puzzled. Poor man, he doesn’t know what to do . . . Oho, he thinks he will move there, does he? Much good that will do him. . . . Never have I seen such a mess as he is in . . . he cannot do anything, he is absolutely helpless, helpless.”
“Ah, you take my bishop, do you? Much I care for that. Nothing. See, I give you check. Ah, now he is in a fright! He doesn’t know where to go. What a mess he is in . . . ”
So the game proceeded, with a brisk exchange of pieces and incivilities and a fluctuation of fortunes, till the little banker lost his queen as the result of an incautious move, and, after several woebegone contortions of his shoulders and hands, declined further contest. A sleek-headed piccolo rushed forward to remove the board, and the erstwhile combatants resumed the courteous dignity that they discarded in their chess-playing moments.
“Have you seen the Germania to-day?” asked Herr Rebinok, as soon as the boy had receded to a respectful distance.
“No,” said von Kwarl, “I never see the Germania. I count on you to tell me if there is anything noteworthy in it.”
“It has an article to-day headed, ‘Occupation or Assimilation,’” said the banker. “It is of some importance, and well written. It is very pessimistic.”
“Catholic papers are always pessimistic about the things of this world,” said von Kwarl, “just as they are unduly optimistic about the things of the next world. What line does it take?”
“It says that our conquest of Britain can only result in a temporary occupation, with a ‘notice to quit’ always hanging over our heads; that we can never hope to assimilate the people of these islands in our Empire as a sort of maritime Saxony or Bavaria, all the teaching of history is against it; Saxony and Bavaria are part of the Empire because of their past history. England is being bound into the Empire in spite of her past history; and so forth.”
“The writer of the article has not studied history very deeply,” said von Kwarl. “The impossible thing that he speaks of has been done before, and done in these very islands, too. The Norman Conquest became an assimilation in comparatively few generations.”
“Ah, in those days, yes,” said the banker, “but the conditions were altogether different. There was not the rapid transmission of news and the means of keeping the public mind instructed in what was happening; in fact, one can scarcely say that the public mind was there to instruct. There was not the same strong bond of brotherhood between men of the same nation that exists now. Northumberland was almost as foreign to Devon or Kent as Normandy was. And the Church in those days was a great international factor, and the Crusades bound men together fighting under one leader for a common cause. Also there was not a great national past to be forgotten as there is in this case.”