Olga Romanoff | Page 2

Russia, whose armies, leagued with those of France, Italy,
Spain, and certain lesser Powers, and assisted by a great fleet of
war-balloons that could fly, though slowly, wherever they were
directed, swept like a destroying pestilence from the western frontiers
of Russia to the eastern shores of Britain; and when they had gained the
mastery of Europe, invaded England and laid siege to London.

But here their path of conquest was brought to an end, for Alan
Tremayne and his brothers of the Terror called upon the men of
Anglo-Saxondom to save their Motherland from her enemies, and they
rose in their wrath, millions strong, and fell upon them by land and sea,
and would have destroyed them utterly, as I had bidden them do, but
that Natasha, who was my daughter and was known in those days as the
Angel of the Revolution, pleaded for the remnant of them, and they
were spared.
But the Russians we slew without mercy to the last man of those who
had stood in arms against us, saving only the Tyrant and his princes and
the leaders of his armies. These we took prisoners and sent, with their
wives and their children to die in their own prison-land in Siberia, as
they had sent thousands of innocent men and women to die before
them.
This was my judgment upon them for the wrong that they had done to
me and mine, for in the hour of victory I spared not those who had not
known how to spare. Now they are dead, and their graves are nameless.
Their name is a byword among men, for they were strong and they used
their strength to do evil.
So we made an end of tyranny among the nations, and when the
world-war was at length brought to an end, we disbanded all the armies
that were upon land and sank the warships that were left upon the sea,
that men might no more fight with each other. War, that had been
called honourable since the world began, we made a crime of
blood-guiltiness, for which the life of him who sought to commit it
should pay; and as a crime, you, the children of those who have
delivered the nations from it, shall for ever hold it to be.
We leave you the command of the air, and that is the command of the
world; but should it come to pass -- as in the progress of knowledge it
may well do -- that others in the world outside Aeria shall learn to
navigate the air as you do, you shall go forth to battle with them and
destroy them utterly, for we have made it known through all the earth
that he who seeks to build a second navy of the air shall be accounted
an enemy of peace, whose purpose it is to bring war upon the earth

again.
Forget not that the blood-lust is but tamed, not quenched, in the souls
of men, and that long years must pass before it is purged from the
world for ever. We have given peace on earth, and to you, our children,
we bequeath the sacred trust of keeping it. We have won our
world-empire by force, and by force you must maintain it.
In the day of battle we shed the blood of millions without ruth to win it,
and so far the end has justified the means we used. Since the sun set
upon Armageddon, and the right to make war was taken from the rulers
of the nations, we have governed a realm of peace and prosperity which
every year has seen better and happier than that which went before.
No man has dared to draw the sword upon his brother, or by force or
fraud to take that which was not his by right. The soil of earth has been
given back to the use of her sons and their wealth has already
multiplied a hundredfold on every hand. Kings have ruled with wisdom
and justice, and senates have ceased their wranglings to soberly seek
out and promote the welfare of their own countries, and to win the
respect and friendship of others.
Yet many of these are the same men who, but a few years ago, rent
each other like wild beasts in savage strife for the meanest ends; who
betrayed their brothers and slaughtered their neighbours, that the rich
might be richer, and the strong stronger, in the pitiless battle for wealth
and power. They have become peaceful and honest with each other,
because we have compelled them to be so, and because they know that
the penalty of wrong-doing in high places is destruction swift and
certain as the stroke of the hand of Fate itself.
They know that no