"If we made war on England," persisted the King, "we should not have to send out a single regiment, or impose any extra taxation on ourselves; in fact we should save. We should simply raise our railway and hotel tariffs fifteen or twenty per cent. to all Englishmen, except children in arms; children up to thirteen half price. There's the whole thing in a nutshell; no difficulty, no difficulty whatever." At this point, to the Premier's annoyance, Professor Teller took up the question with a humorous appreciation of its possibilities. "But, sir," he inquired, "how should we know that they were Englishmen? They might disguise themselves as Americans." "They couldn't!" said the King. "An Englishman trying to talk American makes as poor an exhibition of himself as an American trying to talk English; and besides, you don't know the British character! Penalize them in the way I am suggesting and they would flaunt their nationality in our faces; they would wear Union-jack waistcoats and carry in their pockets gramophones which played 'God save the King' when you touched them. They would make a point of showing us that they didn't care twopence for our fifteen per cent.; in fact, their Tariff Reformers would applaud us--they would put it in large headlines in all their newspapers, and call it an object lesson and would demand a general election on the strength of it." "But supposing, sir," inquired the Professor, "that they did not come at all? We have to remember that we live largely by our tourists; and if we eliminate the English tourist----" "Better and better," said the King. "Think how popular we should be with the rest of Europe! No English? The Germans would simply flock to us; our hotels would be crammed; we should be turning away money at the door." The Prime Minister tapped wearily upon the table; all this was such utter waste of time; and he began to think that the King was so intending it, and was bent upon making a royal Council a constitutional impossibility. But in some curious magnetic way other members of the Cabinet were now beginning to be infected. The idea tickled their national vanity; and though it was all put in a very amateurish way, many of them saw well enough that for war to be retained as a solution of international problems something on these lines would have to be done for it. Syndicalism was merely a showing of the way. "But, your Majesty," inquired the President of the Board of Ways and Means, "might not England retaliate by declaring a Tariff war on us?"