The Swoop | Page 7

in town.
Otherwise there might have been loss of life.

Chapter 7
A CONFERENCE OF THE POWERS
The Russians, led by General Vodkakoff, arrived at Hampstead half an
hour after the bombardment had ceased, and the rest of the invaders,
including Raisuli, who had got off on an _alibi_, dropped in at intervals
during the week. By the evening of Saturday, the sixth of August, even
the Chinese had limped to the metropolis. And the question now was,
What was going to happen? England displayed a polite indifference to
the problem. We are essentially a nation of sight-seers. To us the
excitement of staring at the invaders was enough. Into the complex
international problems to which the situation gave rise it did not occur
to us to examine. When you consider that a crowd of five hundred
Londoners will assemble in the space of two minutes, abandoning
entirely all its other business, to watch a cab-horse that has fallen in the
street, it is not surprising that the spectacle of nine separate and distinct
armies in the metropolis left no room in the British mind for other
reflections.
The attraction was beginning to draw people back to London now.
They found that the German shells had had one excellent result, they
had demolished nearly all the London statues. And what might have
conceivably seemed a draw-back, the fact that they had blown great
holes in the wood-paving, passed unnoticed amidst the more extensive
operations of the London County Council.

Taking it for all in all, the German gunners had simply been
beautifying London. The Albert Hall, struck by a merciful shell, had
come down with a run, and was now a heap of picturesque ruins;
Whitefield's Tabernacle was a charred mass; and the burning of the
Royal Academy proved a great comfort to all. At a mass meeting in
Trafalgar Square a hearty vote of thanks was passed, with acclamation,
to Prince Otto.
But if Londoners rejoiced, the invaders were very far from doing so.
The complicated state of foreign politics made it imperative that there
should be no friction between the Powers. Yet here a great number of
them were in perhaps as embarrassing a position as ever diplomatists
were called upon to unravel. When nine dogs are assembled round one
bone, it is rarely on the bone alone that teeth-marks are found at the
close of the proceedings.
Prince Otto of Saxe-Pfennig set himself resolutely to grapple with the
problem. His chance of grappling successfully with it was not
improved by the stream of telegrams which arrived daily from his
Imperial Master, demanding to know whether he had yet subjugated the
country, and if not, why not. He had replied guardedly, stating the
difficulties which lay in his way, and had received the following: "At
once mailed fist display. On Get or out Get.--WILHELM."
It was then that the distracted prince saw that steps must be taken at
once.
Carefully-worded letters were despatched by District Messenger boys
to the other generals. Towards nightfall the replies began to come in,
and, having read them, the Prince saw that this business could never be
settled without a personal interview. Many of the replies were
absolutely incoherent.
Raisuli, apologising for delay on the ground that he had been away in
the Isle of Dogs cracking a crib, wrote suggesting that the Germans and
Moroccans should combine with a view to playing the Confidence
Trick on the Swiss general, who seemed a simple sort of chap.
"Reminds me of dear old Maclean," wrote Raisuli. "There is money in

this. Will you come in? Wire in the morning."
The general of the Monaco forces thought the best way would be to
settle the thing by means of a game of chance of the odd-man-out class.
He knew a splendid game called Slippery Sam. He could teach them
the rules in half a minute.
The reply of Prince Ping Pong Pang of China was probably brilliant
and scholarly, but it was expressed in Chinese characters of the Ming
period, which Prince Otto did not understand; and even if he had it
would have done him no good, for he tried to read it from the top
downwards instead of from the bottom up.
The Young Turks, as might have been expected, wrote in their
customary flippant, cheeky style. They were full of mischief, as usual.
The body of the letter, scrawled in a round, schoolboy hand, dealt
principally with the details of the booby-trap which the general had
successfully laid for his head of staff. "He was frightfully shirty,"
concluded the note jubilantly.
From the Bollygolla camp the messenger-boy returned without a scalp,
and with a verbal message to the effect that the King could neither read
nor write.
Grand Duke Vodkakoff, from the Russian