th. Yesterday he looked wild and worried. He was at work with others,
they say, at the Admiralty upon some new invention. Poor fellow!"

Norgate, conscious of a curious callousness which even he himself found
inexplicable, made some conventional reply only. Selingman began to talk
of other matters.

"Truly," he observed, "a visit to your country is good for the patriotic
German. Behold! here in London, we are welcomed by a German _maitre
d'hotel_; we are waited on by a German waiter; we drink German wine; we
eat off what I very well know is German crockery."

"And some day, I suppose," Norgate put in, "we are to be German subjects.
Isn't that so?"

Selingman's denial was almost unduly emphatic.

"Never!" he exclaimed. "There is nothing so foolish as the way many of
you English seem to regard us Germans as though we were wild beasts of
prey. Now it gives me pleasure to talk with a man like yourself, Mr.
Norgate. I like to look a little into the future and speculate as to our
two countries. Above all things, this thing I do truly know. The German
nation stands for peace. Yet in order that peace shall everywhere
prevail, a small war, a humanely-conducted war, may sometime within the
future, one must believe, take place. It would last but a short time, but
it might lead to great changes. I have sometimes thought, my young friend
Norgate, that such a war might be the greatest blessing which England
could ever experience."

"As a discipline, you mean?" Norgate murmured.

"As a cleansing tonic," Selingman declared. "It would sweep out your
Radical Government. It would bring the classes back to power. It would
kindle in the spirits of your coming generation the spark of that
patriotism which is, alas! just now a very feeble flame. What do you
think? You agree with me, eh?"

"It is going a long way," Norgate said cautiously, "to approve of a form
of discipline so stringent."

"But not too far--oh, believe me, not too far!" Selingman insisted. "If
that war should come, it would come solely with the idea of sweeping away
this Government, which is most distasteful to all German politicians. It
would come solely with the idea that with a new form of government here,
more solid and lasting terms of friendship could be arranged between
Germany and England."

"A very interesting theory," Norgate remarked. "Do you believe in it
yourself?"

Selingman paused to give an order to a waiter. His tone suddenly became
more serious