“Fragile things?”
“The Germans have removed all their light-ships, all their buoys, and, like the French, the German ports are also defended by mines. An ironclad, given calm sea, is strong as against another ship, but the nature of its build makes it weak in a storm and in insecure waters. An ironclad, owing to its enormously heavy armament, goes to the bottom very rapidly, as soon as it gets a heavy list either on the one side or the other. Again, owing to its enormous weight, it can never ram another vessel for fear of breaking to pieces itself; if a torpedo strikes its armour, or if the ship runs upon a mine, the explosion will send it to the bottom with greater ease than it would a wooden ship of a century ago. And then, if it runs on a shallow or a rock it cannot be brought off again. Moreover, its supply of coal requires to be constantly renewed, so that it cannot be sent on long expeditions. Our ironclads have their own specific purpose—they are intended for a naval battle. But they are like giants, are rendered top-heavy by their own weight, and are thus easily capsized, and the loss of an ironclad battleship, apart from the effect it might have upon our chances in the war, entails the loss of more than a million pounds. The cruisers, again, I would not without urgent necessity expose to the steel projectiles of a Krupp’s coast battery. Let us take care not to suffer the smallest disaster at sea! It would be as dangerous for our prestige and for our position as a world-power as a steel shot would be for the water-line of one of our ships of war.”
The Colonial Minister was silent. He had nothing to urge against these objections.
“Our Indian troops are greatly in need of reinforcements,” began the Prime Minister again. “We must put English soldiers into the field, for we cannot rely longer upon the sepoys.”
“Certainly,” said the Minister of War, “and drafts are constantly being despatched to Bombay. Forty thousand men have been embarked; of these more than twenty thousand have been landed in India; the remainder are still on the sea. A great fleet is on the road, and eight ironclads are stationed in Aden to meet any attack upon our transports. But it is really a question whether we are well advised in still sending more troops to India. My lords! hard as it is for me to say so, we must be prudent. I should be rightly accused of having lost my head if I did more than bare prudence demanded. Great Britain is denuded of troops. Now, I know full well, and England also knows it full well, that an enemy will never plant his foot on these shores; for our fleet assures us the inviolability of our island, but we should not be worthy of our responsible positions were we to neglect any measure for the security of our country. Let us, my lords, be cowards before the battle, provided we are heroes in it! Let us suppose that we had no fleet, but had to defend England’s territory on land. We must have an army on English soil ready to take the field; failing this, we are guilty of treason against our country. The mobilisation of our reserve must be further extended. Ten thousand yeomen, whom we have not yet summoned to the ranks, are to-day in a position to bear arms and wave the sword. To-day every capable man must be enlisted. The law provides that every man who does not already belong to a regular army or to a volunteer corps can, from eighteen to fifty years of age, be forced to join the army, and thus a militia can be formed of all men capable of bearing arms. If His Majesty will sanction it, I am ready to form a militia army of 150,000 men. I reckon for India 120,000 men, for Malta 10,000, for Hong Kong 3,500, for Africa 10,000, 3,000 for the Antilles, for Gibraltar 6,000, and 10,000 more for Egypt, apart from the smaller garrisons, which must all remain where they are at present; I shall then hope, after having called up all volunteers and reserves, to be in a position to place an army of 400,000 men in the field for the defence of the mother country.”
The First Lord of the Treasury shook his head. “Do not let us be lulled by such figures into false optimism! Great masses without military discipline, unused to firearms, with newly appointed officers (and they chosen, moreover, by the men whom they are to command), troops without any practical intelligence, without any understanding of the requirements of modern warfare, such are the men, as I understand, we are to place in the field against such splendid troops, as are the French and German. Whence should we get our artillery? In 1871 we saw the result, when masses of men with muskets were pitted against regularly disciplined troops. Bourbaki was in command of an army that had been disciplined for months gone by, and yet his host, although they took the field with cavalry and artillery, suffered enormous losses on meeting an army numerically inferior, yet well-organised, and commanded by scientific and experienced officers. They were pushed across the frontier into Switzerland, like a great flock of sheep pursued by a bevy of wolves.”
“But they were French, and we are Englishmen!”
“An Englishman can be laid low by a bullet as well as a Frenchman. The days of the Black Prince are past and gone, no Henry V. is to-day victorious at Agincourt, we have to fight with firearms and magazine rifles.”
“The Boers, my lord, showed us what a brave militia is capable of doing against regular troops.”
“Yes, in the mountains. The Tyrolese held out in the same way against the great Napoleon for a while. But England is a flat country, and in the plain tactical strategy soon proves its superiority. No, England’s salvation rests entirely on her fleet.”
A despatch from the Viceroy of India was handed to the Prime Minister: “The Viceroy informs His Majesty’s Government that the Commander-in-Chief in Delhi has massed an army of 30,000 men, and will defend the city. The sepoys attached to his army are loyal, because they are confined within the fortifications and cannot flee. The Viceroy will take care that the Mohammedan sepoys shall all, as far as possible, be brought south, and that only Hindu troops shall be led against the Russians. Orders have been given that the treacherous Maharajah of Chanidigot, whose troops in the battle of Lahore gave the signal for desertion, shall be shot. The Viceroy is of opinion that the Russian army will have to halt before Delhi in order to collect the reinforcements which, though in smaller numbers, are still coming up through Afghanistan. He does not doubt that the English army, whose numbers are daily increasing by the addition of fresh regiments, will, when massed in the northern provinces, deal the Russians a decisive blow. The Commander-in-Chief will leave to General Egerton the defence of Delhi, and concentrate a new field army at Cawnpore, with which it is his intention to advance to Delhi. All lines of railway are now constantly engaged in forwarding all available troops to Cawnpore.”
“This news is, at all events, calculated to inspire new courage,” said the Prime Minister after reading the telegram, “and we will not disguise from ourselves the fact, my lords, that we need courage now more than ever. This new man in Germany, whom the Emperor has made Chancellor, is arousing the feelings of the Germans most alarmingly against us. He appears to be a man of the Bismarck stamp, full of insolent inconsiderateness and of a surprising initiative. We stand quite isolated in the world; Russia, France, and Germany are leagued against us. Austria cannot and will not help us, Italy temporises in reply to our advances, says neither ‘yes’ nor ‘no,’ and seeks an opportunity of allying herself with France and wresting the remainder of the Italian territories from Austria and of aggrandising herself at the expense of our colonies. Yet, whenever England has stood alone, she has always stood in the halo of glory and power. Let us trust in our own right hand and in the loyalty of our colonies, who are ready to come to our aid with money and men, and whom, after our victory, we will repay with all those good gifts that His Majesty’s Government can dispense.”
“Our colonies!” the Minister of the Board of Trade intervened. “You are right, they are ready to make sacrifices. Only I am afraid that those sacrifices which the Right Honourable the Minister for the Colonies demands of them will be too great, and that, having regard to the tendency of the modern imperialism of our Government, they will not believe in those rewards that are to be dangled before their eyes.”
“My lord,” replied the last speaker, “I am considered an agitator, an
d am accused of being responsible for the present perilous position of England. Well, I will accept that responsibility. Never in the world’s history did a statesman entertain great plans without exposing his country to certain risks. I remind you how Bismarck, after the war of 1866 had been fought to a successful issue, said that the old women would have beaten him to death with cudgels had the Prussian army been defeated. But it was not defeated, and he stood before them as a man who had united Germany and made Prussia great. He exposed Prussia to the greatest risks, in that by his agitation he made almost the whole world Prussia’s enemy, declared war upon Austria and upon the whole of South Germany, and forced the latter eventually to engage in the war against France. England at that time pursued the luckless policy of observing and waiting for an opportunity, merely because no agitator conducted its policy. Had England in 1866 declared war against Prussia, Germany would not to-day be so powerful as to be able to wage war upon us. Since those days, profound changes have taken place in England itself, and entirely owing to the growth of the German power. Since the fall of Napoleon, we have not troubled ourselves sufficiently about events upon the Continent, but in our proud self-assurance have thought ourselves so powerful, that we only needed to influence the decisions of foreign governments, in order to pursue our own lines of policy. But this self-assurance suffered a severe shock in the events of 1866 and 1870, and England has, and rightly enough, become nervous. The Englishman down to that period despised the forward policy of the Continental powers. This is no longer the case, but, on the other hand patriotic tendencies are at work even in England itself, which are branded by the weak-minded apostles of peace as chauvinistic. Let that pass, I am proud to call myself a chauvinist in the sense that I do not desire peace at any price, but peace only for England’s welfare. The patriotic tendencies of our people have been directed into their proper channel by my predecessor Chamberlain. And has not the Government for the last thirty years hearkened to these patriotic feelings, in that, whether led by Disraeli or Gladstone, it has brought about an enormous strengthening of our defensive forces both on land and sea? These military preparations, whilst not only redounding to the advantage of the motherland, but also to that of the colonies (which they shall ever continue to do) have saddled the mother country with the entire burden of expenditure. But how shall the enormous cost of this war be met for the future? How shall the commerce of the English world-empire be increased in the future and protected from competition, if the colonies do not share in the expense? I vote for a just distribution of the burdens, and maintain that not England alone but that the colonies also should share in bearing them. The plan of Imperial Federation, a policy which we are pursuing, is the remedy for our chronic disease, and will strengthen the colonies and the mother country in economic, political, and military respects. Certainly, my lords, such utterances will appear to you to be somewhat impertinent, at a time when a Russian army has invaded India and our army has suffered a severe defeat, but I should wish to remind you that every war that England has yet waged has begun with defeats. But England has never waged other than victorious wars since William the Conqueror infused Romanic blood into England’s political life and thus gave it a constitution of such soundness and tenacity that no other body politic has ever been able permanently to resist England. We shall again, as in days of yore, drive the Russians out of India, shall force the fleets of France, Germany, and Russia who are now hiding in their harbours into the open, annihilate them, and thwart all the insolent plans of our enemies, and finally raise the Union Jack as a standard of a world-power that no one will for evermore be able to attack.”
XVIII
THE YOUNG RUSSIAN CAPTAIN OF DRAGOONS
The news of Edith’s kidnapping—for, in Heideck’s opinion, this was the only explanation, because she would otherwise have left a message for him—fell upon Heideck as a crushing blow.
He remembered the terrible cruelties narrated of the period of the Sepoy mutiny. And he only needed to remember his own experiences in Lahore to be convinced that all those horrible stories were no exaggeration, but, rather, well within the actual truth of the facts.
But if it was not a like fate that awaited Edith Irwin, yet perhaps another ignominious lot would be hers, and this could not fail to appear, to the man who loved her, more terrible even than death itself.
His alarm and deep despondency had not escaped the notice of the Prince. He laid his hand sympathetically on Heideck’s shoulder, and said—
“I am really quite miserable, comrade! for I now see what you and the lady are to each other. But perhaps you make yourself uneasy without cause; the departure of the lady is capable, perhaps, of a quite simple explanation.”
Heideck shook his head.
“I do not entertain any hope in this respect, for everything points to the fact that the Maharajah of Chanidigot is the man who has got the lady into his power. This sensual despot has for months past schemed how to obtain possession of her. What, in Heaven’s name, is to be done to free the unhappy creature from his clutches?”
“I will inform the General, and doubt not that he will institute an inquiry. If your supposition is correct, the Maharajah will, of course, be compelled to set the lady free. But I doubt if this is the case. The despot of Chanidigot is at present far away.”
“That would not prevent others from acting on his orders. And do you really believe that your General would, for the sake of an English lady, offend an influential Indian prince, whose alliance would at this present moment be very advantageous for Russia?”
“Oh, my dear friend, we are not the barbarians we are held to be in Western Europe. We do not intend to be behind the rest of the world in chivalrous actions, and we certainly should not begin our rule in India by allowing execrable deeds of violence to take place before our very eyes. I am convinced that the General does not in this matter think differently from myself.”
“You do not know what a great comfort it is to me to hear that; for I shall myself be unable to do anything more for Mrs. Irwin. Since I know that Germany is engaged in the war, I can have no further interest but to join my army as quickly as possible.”
“Of course! A soldier’s duty first. But how shall you manage to get to Germany? It will be a devilish hard job.”
“I must try all the same. Under no circumstances could I remain quietly here.”
“Well, then, let us consider matters. The best plan would be for you to return by sea from Bombay or some other port, like Calcutta, Madras, or Karachi. Karachi is nearest. It has even been given the name of the Entrance Gate to Central Asia. And from Lahore, Quetta, or Mooltan, Karachi can be most readily reached by the railway. Steamship communication between Karachi and Europe is only possible by way of Bombay; there is thence no other direct line of steamers than that plying up the Persian Gulf. You must accordingly go by one of the English steamers of the P. and O. line, which start twice a week. The French Messageries Maritimes, which usually sail between Karachi and Marseilles, will, of course, have long since discontinued their services. You could, therefore, just as well go by railway to Bombay. Via Calcutta or Madras would be a roundabout journey.”
“And I should be entirely dependent upon the English steamship lines?”
“I consider it quite out of the question that the ships of the North German Lloyd or the Austrian Lloyd are still running.”
“Then I shall have to give up the idea of this route altogether. For if I am not to make use of a forged passport, which, moreover, will be very hard to obtain, no English steamer will take me as a passenger.”
“That is certainly very probable,” the Prince rejoined, after some thought. “And then—how are you to get to Bombay? The English are, of course, destroying all the railways on their line of retreat.”
“Well, so far as that is concerned, I could go on horseback.”
“What! right through the English army? and at the risk of being arrested for a spy? Are you not aware that the conquered are, as a rul
e, smarter at shooting those whom they regard as spies than are the victors?”
Heideck could not suppress a smile.
“In this respect the promptness of the Russian procedure could scarcely be excelled. But I allow, that your fears are quite justified. Accordingly, only the road to the north remains open.”
“Yes, you must go to the Khyber Pass on an empty train or with a transport of English prisoners, and then on horseback through Afghanistan to the frontier, and thence again by railway to Kransnovodsk. Your journey would then be across the Caspian to Baku or by railway by way of Tiflis to Poti on the Black Sea and thence by ship to Constantinople. But, my dear comrade, that’s a very long and arduous journey.”
“I shall have to attempt it all the same. Honour commands; and you yourself say that there is no other route than that you have described.”
“Right!—I will take care you are provided with a passport, and will request the General to furnish you with an authority which will enable you to have at any time an escort of Cossacks upon our lines of communication through Afghanistan—But—”
A gleam of pleasure in his face showed that in his view he had hit upon a very happy thought—“Might there not, perhaps, after all be found some solution which would save you all this exertion? The Germans and the Russians are allies. In the ranks of our army you would also be able to serve your fatherland. And an officer who knows India as well as you, would be invaluable to us at the present time. I will, if you like, speak at once with the General; and I am certain that he will not hesitate a moment to attach you to his staff with the rank that you hold in the German army.”
Heideck shook his friend’s hand with emotion.
“You make it difficult for me to thank you as you deserve. Without your intervention, my existence would have come to an inglorious close, and the proposal you now make to me is a new proof of your amiable sympathy. But you will not be vexed if I decline your offer—will you? It would certainly be a great honour to serve in your splendid army, but you see I cannot dispose of myself as I would, but must, as a soldier, return to my post irrespective of the difficulties I may have to encounter. I beg you—Lord! what’s that? in this land of miracles even the dead come to life again.”
The Coming Conquest of England Page 16