CHAPTER XIII.

THE RAID OF THE EAGLES.

It was the suddenness of the calamity that staggered humanity. One day not a cloud in the over-seas sky, and the next a catastrophe that petrified the nation. In London the hoarse croaking notes of the news-vendors--the ravens of the press--filled the streets and squares, and flaring placards, displayed in every quarter, attracted the notice of ever-increasing crowds. Men wrangled, and even fought, over copies of the papers, and edition after edition was reeled off to meet the enormous public demand. It was the news from Dover that created this unparalleled excitement. An inconceivable thing had happened. By means of crafty strategy, a mixed body of American and German troops had seized and were in possession of Fort Warden! Immediately the wildest and most conflicting accounts were in circulation. But, separating the chaff from the wheat, the more responsible of the London journals presently set forth a bald statement of the facts--facts that were alleged to be beyond dispute. The statements published by these papers, indeed, were said to be authorised by the Chiefs of the Intelligence Department at the War Office. Further details, however, constantly were coming over the wires, and it was known that large bodies of regular and territorial troops were being hurried to the aid of the garrison at Dover.

The first report, viz., that foreigners had obtained a foothold by means of the Channel Tunnel was officially contradicted. The simple truth was as follow: On the previous evening a Hamburg liner had entered the commercial harbour, and some hundreds of her passengers at once had landed on the jetty. There was nothing remarkable or suspicious in such an occurrence. The great German liner was a familiar and frequent visitor to the port. Though it was noticed that a large number of passengers came ashore, that circumstance was plausibly explained by the statement of the ship's officers, who said that something had gone wrong with her machinery. It would take the engineers two hours or more to put right the defect. What more natural than that most of the passengers should land and fill up the time by the inspection of the points of interest in the town? The harbour officials estimated that altogether some three hundred men had come ashore. They had the appearance of tourists. The evening was cold, and, wearing travelling caps and capes or ulsters, the visitors passed briskly across the jetty and disappeared, in little parties of eight or nine, into the town.

The townspeople, as they were putting up their shutters, noticed the strangers as they passed through the streets. It was remarked that they spoke to each other in low tones or not at all, also that they did not loiter or stare about them like ordinary sightseers. The general impression was that they had only landed to stretch their legs, and meant to climb the hill and then come back again. They certainly did climb the hill, but none of them returned. It was not until an hour later that an amazing rumour spread throughout the town. The story was brought by bands of excited Amazons belonging to those to whom Fort Warden had temporarily been given up for gunnery practice. Their pale faces and distraught appearance at once made it clear that something very serious had happened. Yet the townsfolk were incredulous. The thing seemed so absurd, so impossible! These girl-soldiers, they thought, were the victims of some monstrous practical joke or of hysterical hallucination. Who could possibly credit such a tale? But the Amazons, in trembling tones and with nervous gestures, declared that it was true. Their numbers rapidly increased; some of them came tearing down the Castle Hill in uncontrollable alarm. All of them, in one way or another, verified the amazing story.

It was this: A band of foreigners, comprising 150 Americans and 150 soldierly Germans, armed with revolvers, had "rushed" Fort Warden. The approaches were open at the time, and guarded by only a few artillerymen. It was visitors' day, and the visitors were departing as the foreigners arrived. The struggle was of the briefest. Those of the artillerymen who showed fight had been instantly shot down. The others had been secured, together with the chief gunnery instructor and the head of the chemical department--a non-combatant from whom the foreigners had violently forced such information as they needed. As for the Amazons themselves, they had not been maltreated--but, what was worse, many had been insultingly kissed or roughly caressed by the invaders. With all speed and no ceremony, they had been contemptuously bundled out of the fort--and here they were to tell the tale!

A staff-officer at the local head-quarters, to whom the report was carried by a breathless tradesman, lost no time in ringing up Fort Warden. For some time there was no reply. He rang angrily again and yet again; at last came some unintelligible response. He swore irritably, and then roared an inquiry:

"Are you there? Who is it?"

Still no reply.

"Why don't you answer? What's this I hear about the Fort?"

The only answer was an inarticulate growl.

"Why the devil don't you speak? Who are you?"

Then, at last, came an intelligible response--in English with a strong American intonation:

"Guess you'd better come and see!"

* * * * *

How and why had this dastardly combined attack on England come to pass? The story can be briefly told. Great Britain had long been regarded by America as old and stricken in years--not merely as the old country, but as a country that was in its dotage--old and played out. America was young and lusty, and quite persuaded that the old folk at home were too feeble to retain the management of the old Estate. Already the United States, in the scramble for British possessions, had pocketed some nice little pickings. The West Indian Islands, the Bermudas and British Guiana, had been virtually surrendered to Washington. England for years, but in vain, had sought to placate this big and blustering branch of the ancient race whenever family friction had arisen. Again and again weaker members of the clan, poor relations, like Newfoundland, had been sacrificed to the demands of the United States. But some appetites are insatiable, some ambitions unbounded. A new order of American politicians had arisen, men who aimed at a great federation of the Anglo-Saxon race, with America not as the junior partner, but as the head and ruling spirit of that federation. When the possessor of a great estate becomes imbecile or lapses into second childhood his affairs are taken out of his hands--for his own good and for the due protection of his solicitous relations. That, argued the plotters, was just what was needed in the case of Great Britain. The indications of decrepitude had been slowly but, to keen observers, convincingly manifested during a period of more than thirty years. Thirty years ago Englishmen would have scouted the idea of an American invasion, or the idea of America in alliance with Germany against Great Britain. Monstrous! Was not blood thicker than water? Were not the American people our own kith and kin? Yes, but times had changed, while human nature had remained the same. America had become a cosmopolitan country. From all parts of Europe--and especially from Germany--men had emigrated to the United States. Thither, too, swarms of the yellow from China and Japan, had insidiously made their way in spite of opposition; and year after year the black population of the great continent had enormously increased, while the Anglo-Saxon birth-rate had rapidly declined. The British element in America thus had been absorbed, submerged. The old and consolatory theory of family ties, like other popular fallacies fondly cherished in spite of the march of events, at last had been convincingly exploded by the raid on Dover.

Signs of the coming times had not been wanting. England, fearing a German invasion, had kept her fleets in home waters. The great scheme of Imperial Defence, much discussed in 1909, had not been perfected. As far back as the earthquake of 1906 in Jamaica, the growing inability of England to look after her outlying possessions had been strikingly instanced. No British Squadron was near at hand in that hour of trial to succour the afflicted islanders. Was it not an American, not an English, Admiral who had come to the rescue of the British colony? Had not the English Governor been summarily suppressed by the Home Government because he had ventured sarcastically to point out that American assistance, however kindly meant, was not required, and had not been regulated by the accepted law of nations?

From that day forth--and there had been other similar examples--the more enterprising politicians of Washington took an increasing interest in British affairs, and dreamed dreams in which the old familiar colours on the map of the world--where once upon a time red was so predominant--underwent some radical and striking alterations.

Of course, there was one part of the British dominions, and that very near to the centre of British Government, in which America had taken the closest interest for more than a century. There was Ireland, the emigrated population of which had become part of the mixed population of the United States. The Irish vote, moreover, had become of increasing importance to those who wished to hold the helm at Washington; and, in truth, it was the old and long cherished idea of planting the American standard on Irish soil that gradually had led up to this daring exploit, the news of which the great guns of Fort Warden were booming out to all the world.

It was not really surprising that men with so marked an aptitude for commercial enterprise as the American wire-pullers should have turned covetous eyes towards the Isle of Erin. Ireland was the great junction for the ship-line between the Old Country and the New, an unexploited island of noble harbours, rich in mountain, lake, and river.

A certain Senator Hiram P. Dexter, a Prince of Tammany, who had become President of the United States, crystallised the idea thus:

"England had colonised America. Why should not America re-colonise depopulated Ireland. She could then dominate her former senior partner in the ancient British firm and make things hum!"

The idea was "cute," inspiring. Nevertheless, it was certain that, however anxious she might be for peace and quietness, Britannia could never tolerate another flag so near to her own centre of government. The line must be drawn somewhere. Hiram P. Dexter and his friends realised that for dominion in Ireland, even under the Jardine dispensation and in the reign of woman, England must needs fight, fight to the bitter end; unless, indeed, by some master-stroke of policy and daring she could first be disabled by the strong man armed.

Hence the plan of campaign--by unscrupulous strategy to seize the key of the castle, the stronghold of Dover; while, at the same time, the squadrons of the two Eagles menaced the coast of Ireland itself and landed troops at various points.

It was an infamy; it was a dastardly and fratricidal act; it was a combination worthy of Herod and Pilate! All these things were said. But history is not made or unmade by the aid of epithets. History reckons with great national forces, race problems, and the bed-rock of accomplished facts. Abundant precedents could have been cited, and nothing succeeds likes success. In this case, if the attempt should fail, it might be explained away as the mad raid of a band of freebooters. Those who survived might be nominally called to account, just as had happened fifty years earlier after the futile raid of a certain Dr. Jameson, and others, when one Kruger was "King" of the Transvaal. In either event, whatever England might think and say of this stab in the back, there were millions in the States who would applaud the blow as smart beyond anything that had ever been attempted by American Presidents, and Hiram P. Dexter would go down to posterity as a Napoleon of enterprise--the man who realised that even America was not big enough in these mid-century days for the mixed peoples of the States; that the dominant race in that massed population needed more room to turn round in; more scope for hustling; fresh fields and pastures new for the feverish multiplication of the almighty dollar.

But there was another nation to be reckoned with.

The two greatest competitors for world-power and commerce were Germany and America. And Germany and America did not want to fight--at present. A system of mutual concessions--with mental reservations--better suited the provisional purposes of Berlin and Washington, at any rate for the time being. Clearly, nothing could be done by way of aggression in Europe without taking Germany into account. So the business-like President of the States had engineered with the Germans what brokers and auctioneers describe as a big "knock-out." They had come to an understanding--about England--an understanding provisional and tentative.

Again, thirty years ago Englishmen would have scouted such an idea. But nothing stands still. We ripe and ripe, and then from hour to hour we rot and rot. So also with the Empires of the world. The law of the survival of the fittest operates in all created things. Britain herself had been one of the chief exponents of this immutable law. Not by means of Peace Conferences and a tentative reduction of armaments, coupled with pious platitudes concerning methods of barbarism--otherwise War--had her great Empire been built up. With the strong hand, in past times, we had belaboured effete and wealthy Spain. With force of arms we had driven from the seas Holland--once our great and powerful rival for the trade of the world. We had humbled Napoleon and the pride of France on the field of Waterloo. India had been taken with the sword. With shot and shell and reeking bayonet these and other things were done. And as we had done unto others, by reason of the necessities of national existence, so might we rationally have expected that others in their turn would do unto us.

History, though in our self-absorption we forget it, is full of dramatic surprises, and suddenly develops startling situations. The rise of Japan had been a staggering surprise--both for Europe and America, and, indeed, had become a great factor in the latest departure of American policy. There had been other shocks, and there were more to follow. Over all the white nations there hung a dark and ominous shadow, ever increasing, caused by the rise and rapid expansion of the yellow and black. The East was filling up, and inasmuch as Great Britain still held much coveted territory in the West, and had money in her banks, it was around and against the British Isles that the Spirit of Annexation still watchfully hovered--ready to pounce.

The raid at Dover--whether failing or succeeding--therefore must be viewed as a sign, a lurid, awful sign, of altered times. The hour was well chosen. Nicholas Jardine, the Man of the People, lay dead. The nation was in the throes of a domestic crisis, the Champion of the Women straining every nerve to take the dead President's place, and pursue a programme which would satisfy the special aspirations of her sex.

Yet it could not be believed that such a nation, a race originally so splendid in fibre, so dogged in courage, would take the onslaught of her rivals lying down. England, surely, now at the eleventh hour, would be roused to action. England would fight, and even dying breathe defiance to her foes. But, alas! England sorely needed leadership--the potent magic of some great personality to inspire her people with courage and enthusiasm. And in this hour of dire distress, Renshaw, the only leader who could have commanded a widespread patriotic following, was lost to England--lying scarred and beaten, it was said, chained like a dog in the prison of the Mahdi.

So thought most of those who thought of him at all. Yet, even while his name was on their lips, the Phoenix was reviving. Sir Robert Herrick knew it. General Hartwell and Linton knew it; and there were others, quick of hearing, keen of sight, who already heard the flapping of the wings; saw the Phoenix rising from the ashes of the past and speeding from afar towards our violated shores.