Kowloon, with its newly-opened railway disappearing into the ‘China-side’ hills, the grim lines of the four-funnelled British battle-cruiser at the naval dock, the red rectangles of bunting sliding gently down the flag-poles at the sterns of a hundred British merchantmen at the boom of the sunset gun—I scanned these for the answer, but they all seemed to argue the other way—against German dominance. ‘I give it up,’ I said finally. ‘What is it? Where is it?’ ‘There,’ he replied, pointing to the solid blocks of tall office buildings in the heart of the town and along the Bund. ‘You see, do you not, that some of the buildings are dark and deserted, and that in others the lights are being turned on? Well then! The lighted ones are German, the dark ones English. _That_ is the answer. The English are at the Cricket Club (see the lights on the veranda) and at Happy Valley—you saw them trooping to one or the other all the way from three o’clock onward. But in some of the German offices those lights will be burning at nine and ten o’clock, and even up to twelve or one on the nights before mail day. _That_ is the answer. We Germans are winning the trade of the world because of our capacity for, our willingness to, _work, work, work_,’ he concluded, punctuating the final words with blows upon the wicker arms of his chair. He puffed his cigar in angry impatience for a few moments, peering moodily into the gathering darkness, before resuming. ‘The continuance of our present rate of progress would win us everything if only we could contrive to remain free to concentrate our energies upon it. Instead of working to that end, however, it is as though every move of—from a certain quarter, was deliberately calculated to provoke, to embroil us with, the very powers whom it would serve every material interest we have to remain friendly with. A very little more of the brand of _welt-politik_ that the Kaiser’ (he did not attempt an euphemism this time) ‘has been launching during the last few years, and we will not, cannot, be left free to win on to the goal that is already in sight. There is, perhaps, an even chance—certainly not better than that—that a great European war might be a short-cut to our commercial supremacy; but, the way things are going now, we take _no_ chances. And if we failed to win the war, we could never have the same clear field again. You will understand now why I feel so strongly opposed to an Imperial policy which, if not radically changed, cannot but end in war.’