THE CAPTURE OF A CONTINENT.
Within an hour after the execution of Michael Roburoff the _Ithuriel_
was winging her way back to Aeria, and at least two of her company
were anticipating their return to the valley with feelings very
different to those with which they had contemplated their departure.
When the last farewells and congratulations had been spoken, and the
air-ship rose from the earth, Tremayne returned to the house to
commence forthwith the great task which now developed upon him; for
in addition to being Chief of the Central Executive, he now assumed
the direct command of the American Section, which, after long
consideration, had been selected as the nucleus of the Federation of
the English-speaking peoples of the world.
For a fortnight he worked almost night and day, attending to every
detail with the utmost care, and bringing into play all those rare
powers of mind which in the first instance had led Natas to select
him as the visible head of the Executive. In this way the chief
consequence of the love-madness of Roburoff had been to place at the
head of affairs in America the one man of all others most fitted by
descent and ability to carry out such a work, and to this fact its
complete success must in a great measure be attributed.
So perfectly were his plans laid and executed, that right up to the
moment when the signal was given and the plans became actions,
American society went about its daily business without the remotest
suspicion that it was living on the slope of a slumbering volcano
whose fires were so soon to burst forth and finally consume the
social fabric which, despite its splendid exterior, was inwardly as
rotten as were the social fabrics of Rome and Byzantium on the eve of
their fall.
On the 1st of October the cables brought the news of the fall of the
Quadrilateral, the storming of Hamburg, and the retreat of the
British forces on Antwerp. Four days later came the tidings of a
great battle under the walls of Antwerp, in which the British and
German forces, outnumbered ten to one by the innumerable hosts of the
League, had suffered a decisive defeat, which rendered it imperative
for them to fall back upon the Allied fleets in the Scheldt, and to
leave the Netherlands to the mercy of the Tsar and his allies, who
were thus left undisputed masters of the continent of Europe.
This last and crowning victory had been achieved by exactly the same
means which had accomplished all the other triumphs of the campaign,
and therefore there will be no need to enter into any detailed
description of it. Indeed, the fall of the Quadrilateral and the
defeat of the last army of the Alliance round Antwerp would have been
accomplished much more easily and speedily than it had been but for
the fact that the weather, which had been fine up to the end of July,
had suddenly broken, and a succession of violent storms and gales
from the north and north-west had made it impossible for the
war-balloons to be brought into action with any degree of
effectiveness.
During the last week of September the storms had ceased, and then the
work of destruction began. Not even the hitherto impregnable
fortresses of Tournay, Mons, Namur, and Liége had been able to
withstand the assault from the air any better than the forts of
Berlin or the walls of Constantinople. A day's bombardment had
sufficed to reduce them to ruins, and, the chain once broken, the
armies of the League swept in wave after wave across the plains which
they had guarded.
The loss of life had been unparalleled even in this the greatest of
all wars, for the British and Germans had fought with a dogged
resolution which, but for the vastly superior numbers and the
irresistible means of destruction employed against them, must
infallibly have triumphed. As it was, it was only when valour had
achieved its last sacrifice, and further resistance became rather
madness than devotion, that the retreat was finally sounded in time
to embark the remnants of the armies of the Alliance on board the
warships. Happily at the very hour when this was being done the
weather broke again, and the ships of the Allied fleets were
therefore able to make their way to sea through storm and darkness,
unmolested by the war-balloons.
While the American press was teeming with columns of description
telegraphed at enormous cost from the seat of war, and with
absolutely misleading articles as to the policy of the League and the
attitude of studious neutrality that was to be observed by the United
States Government, the dockyards, controlled directly and indirectly
by the American Ring, were working night and day putting the
finishing touches to the flotilla of dynamite cruisers and other
war-vessels intended to carry out the plan revealed by Michael
Roburoff on board the _Ithuriel_, after he had been taken off the
_Aurania_ in the Mid-Atlantic.
Briefly described, this was as follows:--Representative government in
America had by this time become a complete sham. The whole political
machinery and internal resources of the United States were now
virtually at the command of a great Ring of capitalists who, through
the medium of the huge monopolies which they controlled, and the
enormous sums of money at their command, held the country in the
hollow of their hand. These men were as totally devoid of all human
feeling or public sentiment as it was possible for human beings to
be. They had grown rich in virtue of their contempt of every
principle of justice and mercy, and they had no other object in life
than to still further increase their gigantic hoards of wealth, and
to multiply the enormous powers which they already wielded. The then
condition of affairs in Europe had presented them with such an
opportunity as no other combination of circumstances could have given
them, and ignoring, as such wretches would naturally do, all ties of
blood and kindred speech, they had determined to take advantage of
the situation to the utmost.
In the guise of the United States Government the Ring had concluded a
secret treaty with the commanders of the League, in virtue of which,
at a stipulated point in the struggle, America was to declare war on
Britain, invade Canada by land, and send to sea an immense flotilla
of swift dynamite cruisers of tremendously destructive power, which
had been constructed openly in the Government dockyards, ostensibly
for coast defence, and secretly in private yards belonging to the
various Corporations composing the Ring.
This flotilla was to co-operate with the fleet of the League as soon
as England had been invaded, and complete the blockade of the British
ports. Were this once accomplished nothing could save Britain from
starvation into surrender, and the British Empire from disintegration
and partition between the Ring and the Commanders of the League, who
would then practically divide the mastery of the world among them.
On the night of the 4th of October the five words: "The hour and the
man," went flying over the wires from Washington throughout the
length and breadth of the North American Continent. The next morning
half the industries of the United States were paralysed; all the
lines of communication by telegraph and rail between the east and
west were severed, the shore ends of the Atlantic cables were cut, no
newspapers appeared, and every dockyard on the eastern coast was in
the hands of the Terrorists.
To complete the stupor produced by this swift succession of
astounding events, when the sun rose an air-ship was seen floating
high in the air over the ten arsenals of the United States--that is
to say, over Portsmouth, Charlestown, Brooklyn, League Island, New
London, Washington, Norfolk, Pensacola, Mare Island, and Port Royal,
while two others held Chicago and St. Louis, the great railway
centres for the west and south, at their mercy, and the _Ithuriel_,
with a broad red flag flying from her stern, swept like a meteor
along the eastern coast from Maine to Florida.
To attempt to describe the condition of frenzied panic into which the
inhabitants of the threatened cities, and even the whole of the
Eastern States were thrown by the events of that ever-memorable
morning, would be to essay an utterly hopeless task. From the
millionaire in his palace to the outcasts who swarmed in the slums,
not a man or a woman kept a cool head save those who were in the
councils of the Terrorists. The blow had fallen with such stupefying
suddenness that as far as America was concerned the Revolution was
practically accomplished before any one very well knew what had
happened.
Out of the midst of an apparently peaceful and industrious population
five millions of armed men had sprung in a single night. Factories
and workshops had opened their doors, but none entered them; ships
lay idle by the wharves, offices were deserted, and the great reels
of paper hung motionless beside the paralysed machines which should
have converted them into newspapers.
It was not a strike, for no mere trade organisation could have
accomplished such a miracle. It was the force born of the
accumulation of twenty years of untiring labour striking one mighty
blow which shattered the commercial fabric of a continent in a single
instant. Those who had been clerks or labourers yesterday, patient,
peaceful, and law-abiding, were to-day soldiers, armed and
disciplined, and obeying with automatic regularity the unheard
command of some unknown chief.
This of itself would have been enough to throw the United States into
a panic; but, worse than all, the presence of the air-ships, holding
at their mercy the arsenals and the richest cities in the Eastern
States, proved that tremendous and all as it was, this was only a
phase of some vast and mysterious cataclysm which might as easily
involve the whole civilised world as it could overwhelm the United
States of America.
By noon, almost without striking a blow, every dynamite cruiser and
warship on the eastern coast had been seized and manned by the
Terrorists. To the dismay of the authorities, it was found that more
than half the army and navy, officers and men alike, had obeyed the
mysterious summons that had gone throughout the land the night
before; and matters reached a climax when, as the clocks of
Washington were striking twelve, the President himself was arrested
in the White House.
All the streets of Washington were in the hands of the Terrorists,
and at one o'clock Tremayne, after posting guards at all the
approaches, entered the Senate, and in the name of Natas proclaimed
the Constitution of the United States null and void, and the
Government dissolved.
Then with a copy of the Constitution in his hand he proceeded to the
steps of the Capitol, and, in the presence of a vast throng of the
armed members of the American Section, he proclaimed the Federation
of the English-speaking races of the world, in virtue of their bonds
of kindred blood and speech and common interests; and amidst a scene
of the wildest enthusiasm called upon all who owned those bonds to
forget the artificial divisions that had separated them into hostile
nations and communities, and to follow the leadership of the
Brotherhood to the conquest of the earth.
Then in a few strong and simple phrases he exposed the subservience
of the Government to the capitalist Ring, and described the inhuman
compact that it had entered into with the arch-enemies of national
freedom and personal liberty to crush the motherland of the
Anglo-Saxon nations, and for the sake of sordid gain to rivet the
fetters of oppression upon the limbs of the race which for a thousand
years had stood in the forefront of the battle for freedom.
As he concluded his appeal, one mighty shout of wrath and execration
rose up to heaven from a million throats. He waited until this died
away into silence, then, raising the copy of the Constitution above
his head, he cried in clear ringing tones--
"For a hundred and fifty years this has been boasted as the bulwark
of liberty, and used as the instrument of social and commercial
oppression. The Republic of America has been governed, not by
patriots and statesmen, but by millionaires and their hired political
puppets. It is therefore a fraud and a sham, and deserves no longer
to exist!"
So saying, he tore the paper into fragments and cast them into the
air amidst a storm of cheers and volley after volley of musketry.
While the enthusiasm was at its height the _Ithuriel_ suddenly swept
downwards from the sky in full view of the mighty assemblage that
swarmed round the Capitol. She was greeted with a roar of wondering
welcome, for her appearance was the fulfilment of a promise upon
which the success of the Revolution in America had largely depended.
This was the promise, issued by Tremayne several days previously
through the commanders of the various divisions of the Section, that
as soon as the Anglo-Saxon Federation was proclaimed and accepted in
America, the whole Brotherhood throughout the world would fall into
line with it, and place its aërial navy at the disposal of its
leaders. Practically this was giving the empire of the world in
exchange for a money-despotism, of which every one save the
millionaires and their servants had become heartily sick.
There were few who in their hearts did not believe the Republic to be
a colossal fraud, and therefore there were few who regretted it.
The _Ithuriel_ passed slowly over the heads of the wondering crowd,
and came to a standstill alongside the steps on which Tremayne was
standing. The crowd saw a man on her deck shake hands with Tremayne
and give him a folded paper. Then the air-ship swept gracefully
upward again in a spiral curve until she hung motionless over the
dome of the Capitol.
Amidst a silence born of breathless interest to know the import of
this message from the sky, Tremayne opened the paper, glanced at its
contents, and handed it to the senior officer in command of the
brigades, who stood beside him. This man, a veteran who had grown
grey in the service of the Brotherhood, advanced with the open paper
in his hand, and read out in a loud voice--
Natas sends greeting to the Brotherhood in America. The work has
been well done, and the reward of patient labour is at hand. This
is to name Alan Tremayne, Chief of the Central Executive, first
President of the Anglo-Saxon Federation throughout the world, and
to invest him with the supreme authority for the ordering of its
affairs. The aërial navy of the Brotherhood is placed at his
disposal to co-operate with the armies and fleets of the
Federation.
NATAS.
When the mighty shout of acclamation which greeted the reading of
this commission had died away, Tremayne stepped forward again and
spoke the few words that now remained to be said--
"I accept the office and all that it implies. The fate of the world
lies in our hands, and as we decide it so will the future lot of
humanity be good or evil. The armies of the Franco-Slavonian League
are now masters of the continent of Europe, and are preparing for the
invasion of Britain. The first use that I shall make of the authority
now vested in me will be to summon the Tsar in the name of the
Federation to sheathe the sword at once, and relinquish his designs
on Britain. The moment that one of his soldiers sets foot on the
sacred soil of our motherland I shall declare war upon him, and it
shall be a war, not of conquest, but of extermination, and we will
make an end of tyranny on earth for ever.
"Now let those who are not on guard-duty go to their homes, and
remember that they are now citizens of a greater realm than the
United States, and endowed with more than national duties and
responsibilities. Let every man's person and property be respected,
and let the penalty of all violence be death. Those who have plotted
against the public welfare will be dealt with in due course, and
yonder air-ship will be despatched with our message to the Tsar at
sundown. Long live the Federation!"
Millions of throats took up the cry as the last words left his lips
until it rolled away from the Capitol in mighty waves of sound,
flowing along the crowded streets and overrunning the utmost confines
of the capital.
Thus, without the loss of a hundred lives, and in a space of less
than twelve hours, was the Revolution in America accomplished. The
triumph of the Terrorists was as complete as it had been unexpected.
Menaced by air and sea and land, the great centres of population made
no resistance, and, when they learnt the true object of the
Revolution, wanted to make none. No one really believed in the late
Government, and every one in his soul hated and despised the
millionaires.
There was no bond between them and their fellow-men but money, and
the moment that was snapped they were looked upon in their true
nature as criminals and outcasts from the pale of humanity. By
sundown, when the _Ithuriel_ left for the seat of war, the members of
the Ring and those of the late Government who refused to acknowledge
the Federation were lodged in prison, and news had been received from
Montreal that the simultaneous rising of the Canadian Section had
been completely successful, and that all the railways and arsenals
and ships of war were in the hands of the Terrorists, so completing
the capture of the North American continent.
The President of the Federation and his faithful subordinates went to
work, without losing an hour, to reorganise as far as was necessary
the internal affairs of the continent of which they had so suddenly
become the undisputed masters. There was some trouble with the
British authorities in Canada, who, from mistaken motives of duty to
the mother country, at first refused to recognise the Federation.
The consequence of this was that Tremayne went north the next day and
had an interview with the Governor-General at Montreal. At the same
time he ordered six air-ships and twenty-five dynamite cruisers to
blockade the St. Lawrence and the eastern ports. The Canadian Pacific
Railway and the telegraph lines to the west were already in the hands
of the Terrorists, and a million men were under arms waiting his
commands.
A very brief explanation, therefore, sufficed to show the Governor
that forcible resistance would not only be the purest madness, but
that it would also seriously interfere with the working of the great
scheme of Federation, the object of which was, not merely to place
Britain in the first place among the nations, but to make the
Anglo-Saxon race the one dominant power in the whole world.
To all the Governor's objections on the score of loyalty to the
British Crown, Tremayne, who heard him to the end without
interruption, simply replied in a tone that precluded all further
argument--
"The day of states and empires, and therefore of loyalty to
sovereigns, has gone by. The history of nations is the history of
intrigue, quarrelling, and bloodshed, and we are determined to put a
stop to warfare for good and all. We hold in our hands the only power
that can thwart the designs of the League and avert an era of tyranny
and retrogression. That power we intend to use whether the British
Government likes it or not.
"We shall save Britain, if necessary, in spite of her rulers. If they
stand in the way, so much the worse for them. They will be called
upon to resign in favour of the Federation and its Executive within
the next seven days. If they consent, the forces of the League will
never cross the Straits of Dover. If they refuse we shall allow
Britain to taste the results of their choice, and then settle the
matter in our own way."
The next day the Governor dissolved the Canadian Legislatures "under
protest," and retired into private life for the present. He felt that
it was no time to argue with a man who had millions of men behind
him, to say nothing of an aërial fleet which alone could reduce
Montreal to ruins in twelve hours.
After arranging matters in Canada the President returned to
Washington in the _Ariel_, which he had taken into his personal
service for the present, and set about disposing of the Ring and
those members of the late Government who were most deeply implicated
in the secret alliance with the leaders of the League. When the facts
of this scheme were made public they raised such a storm of popular
indignation, that if those responsible for it had been turned loose
in the streets of Washington they would have been torn to pieces like
vermin.
As it was, however, they were placed upon their trial before a
Commission of seven members of the Inner Circle of the American
Section, presided over by the President. Their guilt was speedily
proved beyond the shadow of a doubt. Documents, memoranda, and
telegrams were produced by men who had seemed their most trusted
servants, but had been in reality members of the Brotherhood told off
to unearth their schemes.
Cyphers were translated which showed that they had practically sold
the resources of the country in advance to the Tsar and his allies,
and that they were only waiting the signal to declare war without
warning and without cause upon Britain, blockade her ports, and
starve her into surrender and acceptance of any terms that the
victors might choose to impose. Last of all, the terms of the bargain
between the League and the Ring were produced, signed by the late
President and the Secretary of State, and countersigned by the
Russian Minister at Washington.
The Court sat for three days, and reassembled on the fourth to
deliver its verdict and sentence. Fifteen members of the late
Government, including the President, the Vice-President, and the
Secretary of State, and twenty-four great capitalists composing the
Ring, were found guilty of giving and receiving bribes, directly and
indirectly, and of betraying and conspiring to betray the confidence
of the American people in its elected representatives, and also of
conspiring to make war without due cause on a friendly Power for
purely commercial reasons.
At eleven o'clock on the morning of the 9th of October the President
of the Federation rose in the Senate House, amidst breathless
silence, to pronounce the sentence of the Court.
"All the accused," he said, speaking in slow, deliberate tones, "have
been proved guilty of such treason against their own race and the
welfare of humanity as no men ever were guilty of before in all the
disreputable history of state-craft. In view of the suffering and
misery to millions of individuals, and the irreparable injury to the
cause of civilisation that would have resulted from the success of
their schemes, it would be impossible for human wit to devise any
punishment which in itself would be adequate. The sentence of the
Court is the extreme penalty known to human justice--Death!"
A shudder passed through the vast assembly as he pronounced the
ominous word, and the accused, who but a few days before had looked
upon the world as their footstool, gazed with blanched faces and
terror-stricken eyes upon each other. He paused for a moment, and
looked sternly upon them. Then he went on--
"But the Federation does not seek a punishment of revenge, but of
justice; nor shall its first act of government be the shedding of
blood, however guilty. Therefore, as President I override the
sentence of death, and instead condemn you, who have been proved
guilty of this unspeakable crime, to confiscation of the wealth that
you have acquired so unscrupulously and used so mercilessly, and to
perpetual banishment with your wives and families, who have shared
the profits of your infamous traffic.
"You will be at once conveyed to Kodiak Island, off the south coast
of Alaska, and landed there. Once every six months you will be
visited by a steamer, which will supply you with the necessaries of
life, and the original penalty of death will be the immediate
punishment of any one of you who attempts to return to a world of
which you from this moment cease to be citizens."
The sentence was carried out without an hour's delay. The exiles,
with their wives and families, were placed under a strong guard in a
special train, which conveyed them from Washington _viâ_ St. Louis to
San Francisco, where they were transferred to a steamer which took
them to the lonely and desolate island in the frozen North which was
to be their home for the rest of their lives. They were followed by
the execrations of a whole people and the regrets of none save the
money-worshippers who had respected them, not as men, but as
incarnations of the purchasing power of wealth.
The huge fortunes which they had amassed, amounting in the aggregate
to more than three hundred millions in English money, were placed in
the public treasury for the immediate purposes of the war which the
Federation was about to wage for the empire of the world. All their
real estate property was transferred to the various municipalities in
which it was situated, and their rents devoted to the relief of
taxation, while the railways and other enterprises which they had
controlled were declared public property, and placed in the hands of
boards of management composed of their own officials.
Within a week everything was working as smoothly as though no
Revolution had ever taken place. All officials whose honesty there
was no reason to suspect were retained in their offices, while those
who were dismissed were replaced without any friction. All the
affairs of government were conducted upon purely business principles,
just as though the country had been a huge commercial concern, save
for the fact that the chief object was efficiency and not
profit-making.
Money was abundantly plentiful, and the necessaries of life were
cheaper than they had ever been before. Perhaps the principal reason
for this happy state of affairs was the fact that law and politics
had suddenly ceased to be trades at which money could be made. People
were amazed at the rapidity with which public business was
transacted.
The President and his Council had at one stroke abrogated every civil
and criminal law known to the old Constitution, and proclaimed in
their place a simple, comprehensive code which was practically
identical with the Decalogue. To this a final clause was added,
stating that those who could not live without breaking any of these
laws would not be considered as fit to live in civilised society, and
would therefore be effectively removed from the companionship of
their fellows.
While the internal affairs of the Federation in America were being
thus set in order, events had been moving rapidly in other parts of
the world. The Tsar, the King of Italy, and General le Gallifet, who
was now Dictator of France in all but name, were masters of the
continent of Europe. The Anglo-Teutonic Alliance was a thing of the
past. Germany, Austria, and Turkey were completely crushed, and the
minor Powers had succumbed.
Britain, crippled by the terrible cost in ships and men of the
victory of the Nile, had evacuated the Mediterranean after
dismantling the fortifications of Gibraltar and Malta, and had
concentrated the remains of her fleets in the home waters, to prepare
for the invasion which was now inevitable as soon as fair winds and
fine weather made it possible for the war-balloons of the League to
cross the water and co-operate with the invading forces.
The Tsar, as had been expected, had not even deigned to reply to
Tremayne's summons to disarm, and so the last arrangements for
bringing the forces of the Federation into action at the proper time
were pushed on with the utmost speed. The blockade of the American
and Canadian coasts was rigidly maintained, and no vessels allowed to
enter or leave any of the ports. All the warships of the League had
been withdrawn from the Atlantic, and the great ocean highway
remained unploughed by a single keel.
On the 10th of October the _Ithuriel_ had returned from her second
trip to the West, with the refusal of the British Government to
recognise the Federation as a duly constituted Power, or to have any
dealings with its leaders. "Great Britain," the reply concluded,
"will stand or fall alone; and even in the event of ultimate defeat,
the King of England will prefer to make terms with the sovereigns
opposed to him rather than with those whose acts have proved them to
be beyond the pale of the law of nations."
"Ah!" said Tremayne to Arnold, as he read the royal words, "the
policy which lost the American Colonies for the sake of an idea still
rules at Westminster, it seems. But I'm not going to let the old Lion
be strangled in his den for all that.
"Natas was right when he said that Britain would have to pass through
the fire before she would accept the Federation, and so I suppose she
must, more's the pity. Still, perhaps it will be all for the best in
the long run. You can't expect to root up a thousand-year-old oak as
easily as a mushroom that only came up the day before yesterday."