Elusive Isabel | Page 4

ran thus:
"Secret offensive and defensive alliance of the Latin against the
English-speaking nations of the world is planned. Italy, France, Spain
and two South American republics will soon sign compact in
Washington. Proposition just made to Portugal, and may be accepted.
Special envoys now working in Mexico and Central and South America.
Germany invited to join, but refuses as yet, giving, however, tacit
support; attitude of Russia and Japan unknown to me. Prince Benedetto
d'Abruzzi, believed to be in Washington at present, has absolute power
to sign for Italy, France and Spain. Profound secrecy enjoined and
preserved. I learned of it by underground. Shall I inform our minister?
Cable instructions."
"So much!" commented Mr. Campbell.
He clasped his hands behind his head, lay back in his chair and sat for a
long time, staring with steadfast, thoughtful eyes into the impassive
face of his subordinate. Mr. Grimm perched himself on the edge of the
desk and with his legs dangling read the despatch a second time, and a
third.
"If," he observed slowly, "if any other man than Gault had sent that I
should have said he was crazy."
"The peace of the world is in peril, Mr. Grimm," said Campbell
impressively, at last. "It had to come, of course, the United States and
England against a large part of Europe and all of Central and South
America. It had to come, and yet--!"
He broke off abruptly, and picked up the receiver of his desk telephone.
"The White House, please," he requested curtly, and then, after a

moment: "Hello! Please ask the president if he will receive Mr.
Campbell immediately. Yes, Mr. Campbell of the Secret Service."
There was a pause. Mr. Grimm removed his immaculate person from
the desk, and took a chair. "Hello! In half an hour? So much!"
The pages of the Almanac de Gotha fluttered through his fingers, and
finally he leaned forward and studied a paragraph of it closely. When
he raised his eyes again there was that in them which Mr. Grimm had
never seen before--a settled, darkening shadow.
"The world-war has long been a chimera, Mr. Grimm," he remarked at
last, "but now--now! Think of it! Of course, the Central and South
American countries, taken separately, are inconsequential, and that is
true, too, of the Latin countries of Europe, except France, but taken in
combination, under one directing mind, the allied navies would
be--would be formidable, at least. Backed by the moral support of
Germany, and perhaps Japan--! Don't you see? Don't you see?"
He lapsed into silence. Mr. Grimm opened his lips to ask a question:
Mr. Campbell anticipated it unerringly:
"The purpose of such an alliance? It is not too much to construe it into
the first step toward a world-war--a war of reprisal and conquest beside
which the other great wars of the world would seem trivial. For the fact
has at last come home to the nations of the world that ultimately the
English-speaking peoples will dominate it--dominate it, because they
are the practical peoples. They have given to the world all its great
practical inventions--the railroad, the steamship, electricity, the
telegraph and cable--all of them; they are the great civilizing forces,
rounding the world up to new moral understanding, for what England
has done in Africa and India we have done in a smaller way in the
Philippines and Cuba and Porto Rico; they are the great commercial
peoples, slowly but surely winning the market-places of the earth;
wherever the English or the American flag is planted there the English
tongue is being spoken, and there the peoples are being taught the
sanity of right living and square dealing.
"It requires no great effort of the imagination, Mr. Grimm, to foresee

that day when the traditional power of Paris, and Berlin, and St.
Petersburg, and Madrid will be honey-combed by the steady
encroachment of our methods. This alliance would indicate that already
that day has been foreseen; that there is now a resentment which is
about to find expression in one great, desperate struggle for world
supremacy. A few hundred years ago Italy--or Rome--was stripped of
her power; only recently the United States dispelled the illusion that
Spain was anything but a shell; and France--! One can't help but
wonder if the power she boasts is not principally on paper. But if their
forces are combined? Do you see? It would be an enormous power to
reckon with, with a hundred bases of supplies right at our doors."
He rose suddenly and walked over to the window, where he stood for a
moment, staring out with unseeing eyes.
"Given a yard of canvas, Mr. Grimm," he went on finally, "a Spanish
boy will waste it, a French boy will paint a picture on it, an English boy
will