How and why had this dastardly combined attack on England come to pass? The story can be briefly told. Great Britain had long been regarded by America as old and stricken in years--not merely as the old country, but as a country that was in its dotage--old and played out. America was young and lusty, and quite persuaded that the old folk at home were too feeble to retain the management of the old Estate. Already the United States, in the scramble for British possessions, had pocketed some nice little pickings. The West Indian Islands, the Bermudas and British Guiana, had been virtually surrendered to Washington. England for years, but in vain, had sought to placate this big and blustering branch of the ancient race whenever family friction had arisen. Again and again weaker members of the clan, poor relations, like Newfoundland, had been sacrificed to the demands of the United States. But some appetites are insatiable, some ambitions unbounded. A new order of American politicians had arisen, men who aimed at a great federation of the Anglo-Saxon race, with America not as the junior partner, but as the head and ruling spirit of that federation. When the possessor of a great estate becomes imbecile or lapses into second childhood his affairs are taken out of his hands--for his own good and for the due protection of his solicitous relations. That, argued the plotters, was just what was needed in the case of Great Britain. The indications of decrepitude had been slowly but, to keen observers, convincingly manifested during a period of more than thirty years. Thirty years ago Englishmen would have scouted the idea of an American invasion, or the idea of America in alliance with Germany against Great Britain. Monstrous! Was not blood thicker than water? Were not the American people our own kith and kin? Yes, but times had changed, while human nature had remained the same. America had become a cosmopolitan country. From all parts of Europe--and especially from Germany--men had emigrated to the United States. Thither, too, swarms of the yellow from China and Japan, had insidiously made their way in spite of opposition; and year after year the black population of the great continent had enormously increased, while the Anglo-Saxon birth-rate had rapidly declined. The British element in America thus had been absorbed, submerged. The old and consolatory theory of family ties, like other popular fallacies fondly cherished in spite of the march of events, at last had been convincingly exploded by the raid on Dover.