did
such things. Men with prophetic minds can contemplate such
possibilities, because they have the power of launching themselves
into the unseen. We cannot. This is the reason why cataclysms, things
like the Flood recorded in the Book of Genesis, and the French
Revolution, always come upon societies unprepared for them. The
prophets foretell them, but the common man has not the amount of
imagination which would make it possible for him to believe the
prophets. "They eat and drink, marry, and are given in marriage,"
until the day when the thing happens.

Looking back now and considering, in the light of what actually
happened, my own frame of mind while I was talking to Moyne, I can
only suppose that it was my lack of imagination which prevented my
realizing the meaning of what was going on around me.

The next event which I find it necessary to chronicle is Conroy's
visit to Germany. I heard about it from Marion. She got a letter
almost every day from Bob Power, and it was understood that he was to
pay us a short visit at the end of that week. He explained, much to
Marion's disappointment and mine, that this visit must be postponed.

"The chief," it was thus he wrote of Conroy, "has gone over to
Germany. He's always going over to Germany. I fancy he must have
property there. But it doesn't generally matter to me whether he goes
or not. This time--worse luck--he has taken it into his head to have
the yacht to meet him at Kiel. I have to go at once."

At the moment I attached no importance whatever to Conroy's visit to
Germany. Now I have come to think that he went there on a very serious
business indeed. His immense financial interests not only kept him in
touch with all the money markets of the world. They also gave him a
knowledge of what was being done everywhere by the great manufacturers
and the inventors. Moreover Conroy's immense wealth, when he chose to
use it, enabled him to get things done for him very quietly. He could
secure the delivery of goods which he ordered in unconventional ways,
in unusual places. He could, for instance, by means of lavish
expenditure and personal interviews, arrange to have guns put
unobtrusively into innocent looking tramp steamers and transhipped
from them in lonely places to the hold of the _Finola_. Whether the
German Government had any idea of what was going on I do not know.
Foreign governments are supposed to be well supplied with information
about the manufacture and de