"I don’t think he knows himself. In fact, he said so, quite frankly. In the first place, he hasn’t been invited to help, as yet. In the second, he has been absent from England for the best part of fourteen years, and has not been able to keep himself conversant with the recent orgy of Army reform. He knew that the old Militia had been scrapped, but I found he was not sure whether its place had been taken by the Special Reserve or the National Reserve. And, of course, like all Regulars, he regards the Territorials with the utmost distrust. I think he shares the general soldier-man’s opinion that the ’Terriers’ are the old Saturday afternoon crowd with a new label. His idea seems to be to take no risks with amateur organisations, but to create a _pukka_ new professional army on regular lines. He’s wrong. He should take the present Territorial Army as a nucleus, and expand from that. The Territorial Associations are a most capable lot, and would build up big units for him in no time. Still, whatever way he does it, he will do it well; he’s our great man. And he will need all his greatness. Germany means to smash us this time. She has been calling up her reservists, on the quiet, for the last six months. Her intelligence people have told her that we are all so tied up with the Suffragettes and Ireland that we _can’t_ come in, and that if we do, we cannot put up anything of a fight. I am almost tempted to believe Germany is right. I don’t suppose we have a thousand spare rifles in the country. As for artillery—it takes three _years_ to make a gunner! How on earth—" "Now, then, what are you two absurd creatures conspiring about?" Our hostess was upon us brandishing a croquet-mallet. We rose hurriedly. "Alan Laing, how do you do? Why didn’t you come and tell me you had arrived? As for you, Eskerley, I think you are getting into your second childhood. What’s all this nonsense I hear about war with Germany? Why, I have a signed photograph of the Emperor in my drawing-room! How can one make war on people like that? And yet there you sit, talking about the thing as if it were really possible, and disorganising my _fête champêtre_ by mobilising all my young men! Come and play croquet!" Croquet with Lady Christina resembles nothing so much as croquet with the Queen in "Alice in Wonderland." It is true that she does not order our heads to be chopped off, but one sometimes wishes she would, and be done with it. Her success at the game—and she is invariably successful—is due partly to the nervous paralysis of her opponents, and partly to the uncanny property possessed by her ball of removing itself, while its owner is engaged in altercation, to a position exactly opposite its hoop. I bent my steps dutifully towards the lawn, leaving Lord Eskerley, who fears no one, not even Lady Christina, to fight a spirited rearguard action with that worthy opponent.