THE EVE OF BATTLE.
It will now be necessary to go back about six weeks from the day that
the _Ithuriel_ started on her northward voyage, and to lay before the
reader a brief outline of the events which had transpired in Europe
subsequently to the date of Tremayne's letter to Arnold.
On the evening of that day he went down to the House of Lords, to
make his speech in favour of the Italian Loan. He had previously
spoken some half dozen times since he had taken his seat, and, young
as he was, had always commanded a respectful hearing by his sound
common sense and his intimate knowledge of foreign policy, but none
of his brother peers had been prepared for the magnificent speech
that he had made on this momentous night.
He had never given his allegiance to any of the political parties of
the day, but he was one of the foremost advocates of what was then
known as the Imperial policy, and which had grown up out of what is
known in the present day as Imperial Federation. To this he
subordinated everything else, and held as his highest, and indeed
almost his only political ideal, the consolidation of Britain and her
colonies into an empire commercially and politically intact and apart
from the rest of the world, self-governing in all its parts as
regards local affairs, but governed as a whole by a representative
Imperial Parliament, sitting in London, and composed of delegates
from all portions of the empire.
This ideal--which, it is scarcely necessary to say, was still
considered as "beyond the range of practical politics"--formed the
keynote of such a speech as had never before been heard in the
British House of Lords. He commenced by giving a rapid but minute
survey of foreign policy, which astounded the most experienced of his
hearers. Not only was it absolutely accurate as far as they could
follow it, but it displayed an intimate knowledge of involutions of
policy at which British diplomacy had only guessed.
More than this, members of the Government and the Privy Council saw,
to their amazement, that the speaker knew the inmost secrets of their
own policy even better than they did themselves. How he had become
possessed of them was a mystery, and all that they could do was to
sit and listen in silent wonder.
He drew a graphic word-picture of the nations of the earth standing
full-armed on the threshold of such a war as the world had never seen
before,--a veritable Armageddon, which would shake the fabric of
society to its foundations, even if it did not dissolve it finally in
the blood of countless battlefields.
He estimated with marvellous accuracy the exact amount of force which
each combatant would be able to put on to the field, and summed up
the appalling mass of potential destruction that was ready to burst
upon the world at a moment's notice. He showed the position of Italy,
and proved to demonstration that if the loan were not immediately
granted, it would be necessary either for Britain to seize her fleet,
as she did that of Denmark a century before--an act which the
Italians would themselves resist at all hazards--or else to finance
her through the war, as she had financed Germany during the
Napoleonic struggle.
To grant the loan would be to save the Italian fleet and army for the
Triple Alliance; to refuse it would be to detach Italy from the
Alliance, and to drive her into the arms of their foes, for not only
could she not stand alone amidst the shock of the contending Powers,
but without an immediate supply of ready money she would not be able
to keep the sea for a month.
Thus, he said in conclusion, the fate of Europe, and perhaps of the
world, lay for the time being in their Lordships' hands. The Double
Alliance was already numerically stronger than the Triple, and,
moreover, they had at their command a new means of destruction, for
the dreadful effectiveness of which he could vouch from personal
experience.
The trials of the Russian war-balloons had been secret, it was true,
but he had nevertheless witnessed them, no matter how, and he knew
what they could accomplish. It was true that there were in existence
even more formidable engines than these, but they belonged to no
nation, and were in the hands of those whose hands were against every
man's, and whose designs were still wrapped in the deepest mystery.
He therefore besought his hearers not to trust too implicitly to that
hitherto unconquerable valour and resource which had so far rendered
Britain impregnable to her enemies. These were not the days of
personal valour. They were the days of warfare by machinery, of
wholesale destruction by means which men had never before been called
upon to face, and which annihilated from a distance before mere
valour had time to strike its blow.
If ever the Fates were on the side of the biggest battalions, they
were now, and, so far as human foresight could predict the issue of
the colossal struggle, the greatest and the most perfectly equipped
armaments would infallibly insure the ultimate victory, quite apart
from considerations of personal heroism and devotion.
No such speech had been heard in either House since Edmund Burke had
fulminated against the miserable policy which severed America from
Britain, and split the Anglo-Saxon race in two; but now, as then,
personal feeling and class prejudice proved too strong for eloquence
and logic.
Italy was the most intensely Radical State in Europe, and she was
bankrupt to boot; and, added to this, there was a very strong party
in the Upper House which believed that Britain needed no such ally,
that with Germany and Austria at her side she could fight the world,
in spite of the Tsar's new-fangled balloons, which would probably
prove failures in actual war as similar inventions had done before,
and even if her allies succumbed, had she not stood alone before, and
could she not do it again if necessary?
She would fulfil her engagement with the Triple Alliance, and declare
war the moment that one of the Powers was attacked, but she would not
pour British gold in millions into the bottomless gulf of Italian
bankruptcy.
Such were the main points in the speech of the Duke of Argyle, who
followed Lord Alanmere, and spoke just before the division. When the
figures were announced, it was found that the Loan Guarantee Bill had
been negatived by a majority of seven votes.
The excitement in London that night was tremendous. The two Houses of
Parliament had come into direct collision on a question which the
Premier had plainly stated to be of vital importance, and a deadlock
seemed inevitable. The evening papers brought out special editions
giving Tremayne's speech _verbatim_, and the next morning the whole
press of the country was talking of nothing else.
The "leading journals," according to their party bias, discussed it
pro and con, and rent each other in a furious war of words, the
prelude to the sterner struggle that was to come.
Unhappily the parties in Parliament were very evenly balanced, and a
very strong section of the Radical Opposition was, as it always had
been, bitterly opposed to the arrangement with the Triple Alliance,
which every one suspected and no one admitted until Tremayne
astounded the Lords by reciting its conditions in the course of his
speech.
It was the avowed object of this section of the Opposition to stand
out of the war at any price till the last minute, and not to fight at
all if it could possibly be avoided. The immediate consequence was
that, when the Government on the following day asked for an urgency
vote of ten millions for the mobilisation of the Volunteers and the
Naval Reserve, the Opposition, led by Mr. John Morley, mustered to
its last man, and defeated the motion by a majority of eleven.
The next day a Cabinet Council was held, and in the afternoon Mr.
Balfour rose in a densely-crowded House, and, after a dignified
allusion to the adverse vote of the previous day, told the House that
in view of the grave crisis which was now inevitable in European
affairs, a crisis in which the fate, not only of Britain, but of the
whole Western world, would probably be involved, the Ministry felt it
impossible to remain in office without the hearty and unequivocal
support of both Houses--a support which the two adverse votes in
Lords and Commons had made it hopeless to look for as those Houses
were at present constituted.
He had therefore to inform the House that, after consultation with
his colleagues, he had decided to place the resignations of the
Ministry in the hands of his Majesty,[1] and appeal to the country on
the plain issue of Intervention or Non-intervention. Under the
circumstances, there was nothing else to be done. The deplorable
crisis which immediately followed was the logical consequence of the
inherently vicious system of party government.
While the fate of the world was practically trembling in the balance,
Europe, armed to the teeth in readiness for the Titanic struggle that
a few weeks would now see shaking the world, was amused by the
spectacle of what was really the most powerful nation on earth losing
its head amidst the excitement of a general election, and frittering
away on the petty issues of party strife the energies that should
have been devoted with single-hearted unanimity to preparation for
the conflict whose issue would involve its very existence.
For a month the nations held their hand, why, no one exactly knew,
except, perhaps, two men who were now in daily consultation in a
country house in Yorkshire. It may have been that the final
preparations were not yet complete, or that the combatants were
taking a brief breathing-space before entering the arena, or that
Europe was waiting to see the decision of Britain at the
ballot-boxes, or possibly the French fleet of war-balloons was not
quite ready to take the air,--any of these reasons might have been
sufficient to explain the strange calm before the storm; but
meanwhile the British nation was busy listening to the conflicting
eloquence of partisan orators from a thousand platforms throughout
the land, and trying to make up its mind whether it should return a
Conservative or a Radical Ministry to power.
In the end, Mr. Balfour came back with a solid hundred majority
behind him, and at once set to work to, if possible, make up for lost
time. The moment of Fate had, however, gone by for ever. During the
precious days that had been fooled away in party strife, French gold
and Russian diplomacy had done their work.
The day after the Conservative Ministry returned to power, France
declared war, and Russia, who had been nominally at war with Britain
for over a month, suddenly took the offensive, and poured her Asiatic
troops into the passes of the Hindu Kush. Two days later, the
defection of Italy from the Triple Alliance told Europe how
accurately Tremayne had gauged the situation in his now historic
speech, and how the month of strange quietude had been spent by the
controllers of the Double Alliance.
The spell was broken at last. After forty years of peace, Europe
plunged into the abyss of war; and from one end of the Continent to
the other nothing was heard but the tramp of vast armies as they
marshalled themselves along the threatened frontiers, and
concentrated at the points of attack and defence.
On all the lines of ocean traffic, steamers were hurrying homeward or
to neutral ports, in the hope of reaching a place of safety before
hostilities actually broke out. Great liners were racing across the
Atlantic either to Britain or America with their precious freights,
while those flying the French flag on the westward voyage prepared to
run the gauntlet of the British cruisers as best they might.
All along the routes to India and the East the same thing was
happening, and not a day passed but saw desperate races between fleet
ocean greyhounds and hostile cruisers, which, as a rule, terminated
in favour of the former, thanks to the superiority of private
enterprise over Government contract-work in turning out ships and
engines.
In Britain the excitement was indescribable. The result of the
general election had cast the final die in favour of immediate war in
concert with the Triple Alliance. The defection of Italy had
thoroughly awakened the popular mind to the extreme gravity of the
situation, and the declaration of war by France had raised the blood
of the nation to fever heat. The magic of battle had instantly
quelled all party differences so far as the bulk of the people was
concerned, and no one talked of anything but the war and its
immediate issues. Men forgot that they belonged to parties, and only
remembered that they were citizens of the same nation.
[Footnote 1: At the period in which the action of the narrative takes
place, her Majesty Queen Victoria had abdicated in favour of the
present Prince of Wales, and was living in comparative retirement at
Balmoral, retaining Osborne as an alternative residence.]