It was an indication of the extreme care with which the operations had been developed, that even at this point there were still only two men who had any real knowledge of what the plan of campaign would be. There were those who did not hesitate to declare that a hostile demonstration was being arranged by a foreign power with whom Hampden had come to an understanding. At a favourable moment a pretext for a quarrel would be found, relations would be broken off immediately, ambassadors recalled, and within three days England would be threatened with war. If necessary, an actual invasion would take place, and in view of the sweeping reductions in the army and navy no one thought it worth while to express a doubt that an actual invasion could take place. After arranging for a suitable indemnity the invaders would withdraw, leaving a provisional government in power, with Hampden at its head. This was the extremists' view, and the majority, feeling at heart that however England might be internally riven and their liberties assailed, nothing could ever justify so unpatriotic a course, held that Hampden was incapable of the step. Others suggested civil war; passive resistance to the payment of rates and taxes on so organised a scale as to embarrass the Government for supplies; an alliance, on a basis not readily discernible, with the rank and file of the Socialist party; the secret importation of a sufficient number of aliens to turn an election; and a variety of other ingenious devices, easy to suggest but difficult to maintain. Those who, like Miss Lisle, observed the most, talked the least. Among the working men of the country--the class that the League had come into being to control--it had passed into the category of a second Buttercup League and was ignored. A few, better informed, accepted the conclusions that Mr Hammet and his associates had arrived at, and laughed quietly in their sleeves at the thought of the coming humiliation of the confiding members. Last of all there remained a scattered few here and there, who, through natural suspicion or a shrewder wisdom than their fellows, had of late begun to detect in the existence of the League a real menace to themselves, and to urge the powers, and Mr Tubes in particular, to counteract its aims. It might have been a race, a desperate race, but for one simple thing. Hampden had asked for three years in which to complete his plans, and both friends and foes, deducing from every experience of the past, ranging from the opening of an exhibition to the closing of a war, had conceded that this meant four at least. But Hampden and the man who had been a sailor had no intention of being embarrassed by a race. Not three years meaning four, but three years meaning two, had underlain the boast, and at the end of two years, although there was still much to be gained by time and an unfettered choice of the moment of attack, there was no probability of being forestalled on any important point.