France guards her frontiers, night and day, with
an army ten times larger than she is allowed. Russia has become the
country of mysteries, with something up her sleeve, beyond a doubt, and
there are cities in modern China into which no European dare penetrate.
Japan quite frankly maintains an immense army, the United States is
silently following suit--and God help us all if a war does come!"
"You are right," Karschoff assented gloomily. "The last glamour of
romance has gone from fighting. There were remnants of it in the last
war, especially in Palestine and Egypt and when we first overran
Austria. To-day, science would settle the whole affair. The war would be
won in the laboratory, the engine room and the workshop. I doubt
whether any battleship could keep afloat for a week, and as to the
fighting in the air, if a hundred airships were in action, I do not
suppose that one of them would escape. Then they say that France has a
gun which could carry a shell from Amiens to London, and more mysterious
than all, China has something up her sleeve which no one has even a
glimmering of."
"Except Jesson," Nigel muttered.
"And Jesson's gleam of knowledge, or suspicion," Prince Karschoff
remarked, "seems to have brought him to the end of his days. Can
anything be done with Prince Shan about him, do you think?"
"Only indirectly, I am afraid," Nigel replied. "Maggie is seeing him
this afternoon. As a matter of fact, I believe she telephoned to him
before luncheon, but I haven't heard anything yet.
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