Sir Herbert, glancing fiercely across the table, a stout, red-faced man, full of fiery fight.
'Military significance is an extremely wide term,' I ventured to remark. 'London heard the bombs last night. To-day we are no longer outside the war-zone. We used, in the good old Victorian days, to sing confidently of our "tight little island." But it is no longer tight. It seems to me that it is very leaky—and its leakage is towards those across the North Sea who have for so long declared themselves our friends. Friends! I remember, and not so very long ago, standing on the Embankment and watching the All-Highest Kaiser coming from the Mansion House with a huge London crowd cheering him as their friend.'
'Friend!' snorted Sir Herbert. 'He has been far too clever for us. He has tricked us in every department of the State. Good King Edward knew; and Lord Roberts knew, but alas! our people were lulled to sleep by the Kaiser's pretty speeches to his brave Brandenburgers and all the rest, and his pious protests that his only weapon was the olive branch of peace.'
'Yet Krupp's and Erhardt's worked on night and day,' I said. 'Food, metals, money and war-materials were being collected each month and stored in order to prepare for the big blow for which the Emperor had been so long scheming and plotting.'
'Yes, truly the menace of the Zeppelin is most sinister,' said Roseye across the table. 'How can we possibly fight it? We seem to be powerless! Our lawyers are busy making laws and fining people for not creeping about in the darkness at night, and
