“Or Lord Rockstone may perhaps be just in the midst of one of his usual twenty-four-hour interviews with an American newspaper representative,” he continued his chaffing. “Now if he does not invite Graves and Underhill and Apsworth to have tea with you, you might drop in at Boodles’ on your way back from the city, and we will just pop on to Buckingham Palace and deliver to Queen Mary the ultimatum from the suffragette ladies of the Sioux Indians.” Edestone laughed so heartily that the footman nearly turned to see if something had happened. “And they say that you Englishmen have no sense of humour. The trouble with you though, old top, is that your joke is so deucedly good that you don’t see the point yourself.” They were just passing through one of Rockstone’s military camps, where England’s recruited millions were being trained, and cutting short his badinage Edestone gazed at the scene with interest. “It does seem a pity that all these fine young fellows should be sacrificed in order to settle a question which I could settle in a very short time,” he said, becoming more serious. “Settle it in a very short time?” repeated Lindenberry. “I would like to know how you propose to do it. I know you are full of splendid ideas, and invent all kinds of electrical contrivances to do things that one can do perfectly well with one’s own hands. I suppose you would take a large magnet and with it pull all of the German warships out of the Kiel Canal, and hold them while you went on board and explained to Bernhardi and von Bülow the horrors of war, and if they did not listen to you, you would, like the Pied Piper of Hamelin lead them off with all the other disagreeable odds and ends, submarines and Zeppelins, to an island, way, way out in the ocean, where they would have to stay until they promised to be good little boys?” “Well, wouldn’t that be better than killing a lot of these fine young fellows you have here?” demanded Edestone, although he smiled at his friend’s fantastic idea. “You Americans are developing into a nation of foolish old women,” taunted Lindenberry, “and the sooner that you get into a muss like this one we’re in, the sooner you will get back that fighting spirit which has made you what you are. You are fast losing the respect of the other nations by your present methods, always looking after your own pocket-books while the rest of the world is bleeding to death.” Edestone was thoughtful, and appeared to have no answer for this, and Lindenberry reverted to his request. “If you really want to have an interview with Lord Rockstone, Jack, I think I can possibly arrange it. I will telephone to Colonel Wyatt, who is on his staff, and find out what he can do for you.” And so they chatted until coming to Grosvenor Square where they got out of the automobile in front of an unpretentious red brick house with an English basement entrance, trimmed with white marble and spotlessly clean.