These home-coming patriots were not only rendering valiant service by placing their lives at the King’s disposal, but they were demonstrating, along with native-born Canadians, South Africans, New Zealanders, Australians and Indians, that one of Germany’s fondest dreams was the hollowest of fantasies. I had been familiar for years with a German political literature based on the roseate theory that, once Great Britain was embroiled in a great European war, her world-wide Empire would crack and tumble like a house of cards in a holocaust. Had not Sir Wilfred Laurier on a famous occasion declared that Canada would never be "drawn into the vortex of European militarism"? Were not the Boers thirsting restlessly for revenge and the hour of deliverance from the British yoke? Were not Republican sentiments notoriously rife in Australia and New Zealand, and would not Labor Governments in those remote regions seize eagerly on coveted opportunity to snap the silken cords which bound them to England, and declare their independence? Would not India, the enslaved Empire of the vassal Rajahs, leap at the throat of an England preoccupied in Europe and drive the tyrant into the sea? These were the thoughts which were discussed by Teuton political seers as something more than things which Germany merely desired and hoped for. They were treated as axiomatic certainties. The rally round the Union Jack by the Britons of Australia and New Zealand, Canada and South Africa, Nova Scotia and Jamaica, Barbadoes and Ceylon, British Guiana and Mauritius, Newfoundland and New Brunswick, was Germany’s great illusion. When the "conquered Boers" under Botha, the "alienated Irish" under Redmond, the "rebellious Indians" under maharajahs and princes, even the "downtrodden" black Basutos, Barotses, Masai and Maoris of Africa and Australasia under their native chieftains, announced that they, too, were ready to bleed for the Empire, Germany’s awakening was rude and complete. London might be callous, pleasure-loving and unperturbed. But the Empire was alive both to the peril and the duty of the hour, and when it vowed to face the one and absolve the other an oath was sworn which spelled British invincibility. CHAPTER XVIII WAR IN THE DARK