AUGUSTUS. Oh, that!
THE LADY.--she will resort to fraud, to force, to anything. She will
burgle your office: she will have you attacked and garotted at night in
the street.
AUGUSTUS. Pooh! I'm not afraid.
THE LADY. Oh, your courage will only tempt you into danger. She may get
the list after all. It is true that the guns are moved. But she would
win her bet.
AUGUSTUS [cautiously]. You did not say that the guns were moved. You
said that Blueloo had ordered them to be moved.
THE LADY. Well, that is the same thing, isn't it?
AUGUSTUS. Not quite--at the War Office. No doubt those guns WILL be
moved: possibly even before the end of the war.
THE LADY. Then you think they are there still! But if the German War
Office gets the list--and she will copy it before she gives it back to
Blueloo, you may depend on it--all is lost.
AUGUSTUS [lazily]. Well, I should not go as far as that. [Lowering his
voice.] Will you swear to me not to repeat what I am going to say to
you; for if the British public knew that I had said it, I should be at
once hounded down as a pro-German.
THE LADY. I will be silent as the grave. I swear it.
AUGUSTUS [again taking it easily]. Well, our people have for some reason
made up their minds that the German War Office is everything that
our War Office is not--that it carries promptitude, efficiency, and
organization to a pitch of completeness and perfection that must be,
in my opinion, destructive to the happiness of the staff. My own
view--which you are pledged, remember, not to betray--is that the German
War Office is no better than any other War Office. I found that opinion
on my observation of the characters of my brothers-in-law: one of whom,
by the way, is on the German general staff. I am not at all sure that
this list of gun emplacements would receive the smallest attention. You
see, there are always so many more important things to be attended to.
Family matters, and so on, you understand.