It was clear to the Ambassador, as he sought for a reply, that Lord Rampling of Stanton, in addition to being much richer and more powerful, outshone him on the verbal level. The thought was galling to him. “He will be deceived and we won’t,” he said. “If that is not a moral distinction, I don’t know what is.” He fore-bore to voice his doubts, though they were strongly present to his mind, as to whether Rampling’s motives were altogether as patriotic as he was making out. I was brought here under false pretenses, he thought. This cad is making use of my office.
The silence between them lengthened. Glancing at his companion’s face, Rampling saw that it was set in lines of obstinacy and displeasure. With a perception sharpened by his long experience of making deals of one sort or another, he was aware that his guest’s resentment stemmed less from a concern for Somerville than from a sense of wounded dignity. Short-lived, soon repaired… “You had better consider this carefully,” he said, in slightly sharper tones. “I appreciate your feeling that the bond of the old school tie makes the deception more distasteful, but we are talking now about the vital interests of the British Empire. War is coming, every month brings it nearer. Whatever the pronouncements of the Foreign Office, this is a common assumption and has been so since 1911, when the Germans sent a gunboat to Agadir and blustered about their title to territory in Africa. You will remember the feeling in Britain at the time. All that July we were on the brink of war.”
“Well, they climbed down, as they were in honor bound to do.”
“Good God, what does that mean? What has honor got to do with it? They lost their nerve, that’s all. What about next time? We can be thankful there are people in this government who appreciate the threat. What was the first thing Churchill did on becoming First Lord of the Admiralty? You know it as well as I do: He converted the navy from coal to oil. More speed, less manpower.”
“Many thought it folly at the time, and many still do.” The Ambassador’s tone left no doubt that he was one of this number. “We have the coalfields at home,” he said. “In plentiful supplies, safe, secure, easy of access.” It was just about the time of Agadir, he thought, that Rampling had started taking a close interest in oil. Hardly a coincidence.
“Good old safe coal,” Rampling said, “in good old slow ships. If we are to maintain our naval supremacy we need oil, sir. And it is there in vast quantities in Mesopotamia. In the event of war our army in India could take possession of the region in a matter of days. Ambassador, we are in a race, and if we play safe we will lose it. In fact we are already in danger of losing it. Look at the development of armor-plated warships. Ten years ago we were the only people to have them. Ten years ago we were the only people with Maxim machine guns—now the Maxim gun is standard issue for every German infantry regiment. You will be familiar with the Crowe Memorandum, issued by the Foreign Office a few years ago, I forget the exact date.”
“The Crowe Memorandum was issued in June of 1907.” The Ambassador’s face had warmed a little at this opportunity to correct his host, whose vagueness had been assumed expressly to bring this result about. “It is true that the memorandum revealed worrying discrepancies,” he said.
“And it has got worse since then. Look at German industrial output over the last five years, it has been enormous, they have overtaken us. Look at the money they are spending on armaments. They could put more than a hundred divisions into the field tomorrow. How many have we got, fifteen, twenty? Now there is a law at work here which is as valid in the chancelleries of Europe as it is in the gangland of East London. One who grows more powerful seeks more space, and he needs to dominate that space, and to do this he needs to diminish the power of rivals, by conquest if possible, or at least by impeding cooperation among them. Germany is in that position today, and the space she is seeking to invade is our space, that of the British Empire, the most supreme example the world has ever witnessed of cooperation among nations.”
“Quite so.” The Ambassador’s face had lost its stiffness now in the cordiality of his agreement. “They shall not prevail,” he said. “Bullies are always cowards at heart.”
“So they are, so they are,” Rampling said, wondering why people still uttered this cliché as if it contained some truth. “However, bullies can be bullies for a very long time before they realize they are cowards. They will not realize it at all unless they meet with a strength at least equal to their own. Failing this, they will persist in aggression, and our overseas possessions and our control of the seas will be set at risk. A quarter of the world’s land surface, a quarter of the world’s population, far-flung peoples living in security and increasing prosperity because of our just and enlightened rule. Should we not be ready to make any sacrifice required of us to guard and protect this great cooperative enterprise? Some use of subterfuge is justified in such a cause, don’t you think so?”
“I suppose so… Yes, of course. So long as it doesn’t call our essential integrity into question.”
“We must put first things first,” Rampling said.
The Ambassador nodded, continuing to look before him at the bright water and the plunging birds. It was not easy to see what sacrifice Rampling was making, but he was right about the threat presented by Germany. If war did come, and if Turkey went in on the wrong side, this narrow waterway separating Europe from Asia would be of paramount strategic importance. A hostile Turkey could block the flow of supplies to Russia and menace England’s lines of communication with India…
In response to some association of ideas of which he was barely conscious, he leaned forward and glanced to his left, a little farther down on this European side, to where the towers and walls of the Rumeli Hisar Fortress, built by Mehmet the Conqueror to control the straits and blockade the city, rose above the cypresses of the ancient cemetery. Not the first time these warring currents had decided the fate of empires. A year after this fortress was built Constantinople had fallen to the Osmanli Turks, and with it the thousand-year-old empire of the Byzantines. No accident he had built it here, where the Bosporus was narrowest, the currents at their strongest. What did the Turks call it? Sheitan akintisi, Satan’s stream.
“We have much to lose,” Rampling said. “Do you know the gross nominal value of Britain’s stock of capital at present invested abroad?”
“No, not exactly.”
“It is not far short of four billion pounds. Twice as much as France, three times as much as Germany. And much the greater part of it in distant lands vulnerable to attack, Asia, Africa, the Americas. Quite a lot to set at risk, isn’t it?”
“Tell me,” the Ambassador said, “why did you choose to inform me that Somerville has no prospect of success in getting the line shifted? You could have allowed me to go on thinking what I thought at the outset, that you were able to do something for him. Then I could have given him these assurances in good faith.”
“But that would have meant deceiving you, wouldn’t it? Unnecessary deception is entirely against my code of practice. It is immoral, it is messy, no ends are served by it. I paid you the compliment, as one of His Majesty’s most respected envoys—a fact proved by your posting here, to this most crucial of embassies, at such a time—of telling you the truth. I have made it the rule of my life—”