CHAPTER XXVI
Eight days out of the ten calculated by the president and DoctorLamson for the progress of the Great Experiment had expired, andEurope presented the extraordinary spectacle of a continent armed tothe teeth, possessing the mightiest weapons of destruction that humanscience and skill could invent and construct--and divided into twohostile camps which were practically unable to hurt each other.
Away in the far northern wilderness the giant engines purred onremorselessly, continually drawing away more and more of the vitalearth-spirit from Europe and Asia. In Great Britain and North Americanothing had happened, except a succession of abnormally violentthunderstorms, and certain other minor electrical disturbances whichwere only detected by instruments at the observatories; but all cableshad ceased to work, and the only sea communication possible was bymeans of wooden sailing ships, for every steamer, whether warship,liner, or tramp, broke down when she got about fifteen miles from theEnglish or American coasts. What was happening in the SouthernHemisphere no one knew till long afterwards.
Throughout Europe and Asia a most extraordinary condition of thingswas coming to pass. What had happened at Kiel happened also at all thegreat fortresses along the German frontier which were invested by theFrench and Russians. Guns of all calibres on both sides burst, killingthose who used them, but doing no damage to the enemy. Quick-firingguns jammed or burst and became useless. If a man tried to fire arifle, the breech-lock blew out and killed or maimed him, until Frenchand Germans, Russians, Austrians, and Italians alike refused to fire ashot, and even on the rare occasions when bodies of men got nearenough to each other for a cavalry or bayonet charge, lance-points,sabres, and bayonets cracked and splintered like so many icicles.
By the tenth day every officer and man in Europe had recognised thatif the war was to go on at all it would have to be fought out withfists and feet. All modern weapons of warfare had suddenly becomeuseless. Moreover, communication had become so difficult, that thefeeding of the vast armies in the field was rapidly approachingimpossibility, and the helpless, hostile battalions were beginning tostarve in sight of each other. Locomotives broke down or blew up,bridges collapsed under the weight of the trains, and now horses andmen had become afflicted with a deadly languor which made severeexertion an impossibility.
From the war lords of the nations to the raw conscripts and thecamp-followers it was the same. Neither mind nor body would do itswork. The soul of the world was leaving it--drawn out by thoseremorseless engines into the vast receivers of the Storage Works--andmen were beginning to find that without it they could neither thinknor work any more than they could fight.
There was not a cable or a telegraph line in Europe or Asia that couldbe operated, not a stationary or locomotive engine that would workwithout breaking down or blowing up. Electric lighting and tractionhad for two or three days been things of the past. Throughout twocontinents industries and commerce, like war, were at a standstill; asort of creeping paralysis had spread from the Straits of Dover to theSea of Japan.
There were no exceptions, from the rulers of the highest civilisationsdown to the sampan men of Canton and the fur-clad Samoyeds of thenorthern wilderness. Great fleets and squadrons were either driftingabout the ocean or lying helpless on rock or sand or mud-bank, likethe silenced forts full of guns and ammunition and yet unable to firea single shot either in attack or defence.
On the morning of the eleventh day the French President, who had beendrawn along the useless railway from Paris to Calais by relays ofhorses harnessed to a light truck running on wheels of papier-mache,embarked for Dover on board a fishing-lugger. Twelve hours before theGerman Emperor had sailed from Cuxhaven, which he had reached by railwith infinite difficulty, and after a dozen breakdowns, for Harwich ina fast wood-built schooner-yacht.
During the last four or five days there had been very littlecommunication between the Continent and England. All English steamers,including warships, had been forbidden to pass the three-mile limit.By a happy accident the Channel Fleet and the Home Defence Squadronhad anchored in British waters after the manoeuvres just before MissChrysie pulled that fatal lever. The Mediterranean Fleet was at Malta,powerless to move an engine or fire a gun. Communication across thenarrow seas was still possible by wooden sailing craft, and it was thenews which these had brought from England that had induced the Kaiserand the President to go and see the miracle for themselves.
The moment that they set foot on English soil, which they did almostabout the same time, the growing lassitude of the last few daysvanished.
"These are truly the Fortunate Isles just now," exclaimed the Kaiser,as he drew his first breath of the cool English air. "A few momentsand I am a man again. Then that circular which we all laughed at sowas true!" he went on, to himself. "Yes, everything seems going on asusual. They seem to be caring as little about the state of Europe asthey did about the African war. Why, there's a train running as easilyas though the railways of Europe were not strewn with wrecks."
Then he turned to the aide-de-camp who had accompanied him, and said:
"Von Kritzener, see if you can get me a special to London--but no, wehad better keep incognito. Be good enough to go and see when there isa fast train to London, and then we will get something to eat."
The Emperor and his aide were both in ordinary yachting costume, andthe points of the famous moustache had been drooped downwards. Theaide came back to the yacht in a few minutes, saying that there was afast train to London in forty minutes; so his majesty dined brieflybut well at the Great Eastern Hotel, and presently found himselfspeeding swiftly and smoothly and with an unwonted sense of securitytowards London.
The French President experienced practically the same sensations whenhe landed at Dover and took the train to Charing Cross. Everything wasgoing on just as usual. They were even doing target practice with thebig guns from Dover Castle; and as he heard the boom of the cannon, hethought with a shudder of what had happened only a day or two beforeto the great French siege-guns before Metz and Strassburg.
All he noticed out of the common was what the Kaiser noticedtoo--lines of great steel masts along the coast and clumps of them onevery elevation inland. From what he had already learnt from GeneralDucros, he half-guessed that these were the means through which theearth received the vast volumes of electricity given off from theworks in Boothia Land, and that it was thus that the magneticequilibrium was kept undisturbed.
In London nothing seemed altered. Everybody was going about his dailybusiness as though no such continent as Europe existed; so thePresident and the Kaiser, wondering greatly, both went and put up atClaridge's, and there, to their mutual astonishment, recognised eachother. Both were strictly incognito, both recognised that the state ofaffairs in Europe had reached the limits of the possible, and bothguessed that they had come practically on the same errand. WhereforeKaiser bowed to President and President bowed to Kaiser, after whichthey shook hands, took wine together, and, like a couple of goodsportsmen, proceeded a little later on to discuss the situation in theKaiser's private sitting-room.
The result of an interesting and momentous conversation was that theKaiser sent his aide with an autograph letter to Marlborough Houserequesting the honour of an interview with King Edward for himself andthe President.
The answer was a royal brougham and pair, and a cordial invitation tothe two potentates whom fate and the great Storage Trust had broughtso strangely together to sleep at Marlborough House.
Nearly the whole of the next day was occupied in interviews betweenthe three rulers, and also with the Ministers of the great Powers whowere still in London. The American Minister and the English manager ofthe Great Storage Trust were present at most of them. At the end of alengthy discussion on the _status quo_, the Kaiser confessed, in hisusual frank, manly fashion, that not only Germany, but Europe, washelpless in face of the invisible but tremendous force which the Trusthad shown itself capable of exercising.
"We are beaten," he said, "and it would be only foo
lishness to hidethe fact. Our ships are helpless hulks, most of them wrecks, ourtrains will not run, our machinery will not work, our guns will notshoot. Within three days we have gone back to the Middle Ages, orbeyond them, for, even if we had armour, you could break it with yourfist, and you would not even want a mailed one," he added, with alaugh at his own expense.
"There are over ten millions of men carrying arms they cannot use, andhundreds of thousands of these men are starving because the railwaysare useless and no food can be got to them. It would be absurd were itnot so great a tragedy; but since we cannot fight, we must arrange ourdifferences some other way. What do you say, Monsieur le President?"
"I say as your Majesty does," replied Monsieur Loubet, in his blunt,common-sense fashion; "and since these gentlemen of the Trust haveshown us how helpless fleets and armies may be rendered, perhapsEurope may be induced to seek for some more reasonable method ofarranging disputes than by the shedding of blood."
"I most sincerely hope so," said King Edward; "and if these gentlemenare prepared to endorse these sentiments on behalf of their augustmasters, I think there will be little difficulty in arranging matterssatisfactorily and putting an end to what may be justly described asan intolerable and impossible condition of affairs. What do you say,gentlemen?" he went on, turning to the Ministers.
"I fear, your Majesty, it would be necessary for me to communicatewith my imperial master before I could pledge him to any courseresembling surrender."
"My dear count," said the Kaiser, turning towards him with a laugh, "Iam afraid you hardly realise the position. It would take you at thevery least three weeks, possibly six, to reach Petersburg. You forgetthat all the mechanical triumphs of civilisation are for the presentthings of the past. There are no cables, no telegraphs, no railways.Neither horses nor men are capable of any great exertion, and theirstrength is becoming less every hour. Petersburg is farther fromLondon to-day than Pekin was a month ago."
"And even from Paris," added the President when the Emperor hadfinished, "I have been four days travelling. I came to Calais in atruck drawn by horses along the railway, and from Calais in a fishingboat. Gentlemen, if I may venture to advise, I would suggest that thebest, nay, the only thing that Europe, in your persons, can do, is toplace itself in the hands of His Majesty King Edward. We have beenenemies, but he is the friend of all of us, and if any man on earthcan and will do right it is he."
"I entirely agree with Monsieur le President," said the Kaiser. "Weare helpless, and he can help us. For my own part, I place theinterests of Germany unreservedly in his hands."
After this it was impossible for the Ministers of the other Powers tohold back, and so a joint-note was drawn up there and then, prayingKing Edward to accept the office of mediator between the signatoryPowers and those uncrowned monarchs who, from their citadel in themidst of the far-off northern wilderness, had proved their title tosovereignty by demonstrating their power to render the nation helplessat their will.
The only communication that was now possible with Canada, andtherefore with Boothia Land, was by means of aerographic messagestransmitted from one station to another _via_ the north of Scotland,The Faroes, Iceland, Greenland, and Newfoundland, where the cable wasworking as usual. It took nearly twelve hours for the messages toreach the works, and the president had scarcely communicated itscontents to his colleagues when the _Nadine_ came rushing full speedinto Adelaide Bay with the news that the great Russian ice-breaker,with three other vessels in her wake, was steaming down from thenorthward about twenty miles away.