Michael felt inclined to laugh at this rapid and disastrous sequence of ominous forebodings; it was so completely characteristic of Aunt Barbara to take the most violent possible view of the situation, which no doubt had its dangers. And what Michael felt was felt by the enormous majority of English people.
“Dear Aunt Barbara, you do get on quick,” he said.
“It will happen quickly,” she said. “There is that little cloud in the east like a man’s hand today, and rather like that mailed fist which our sweet peaceful friend in Germany is so fond of talking about. But it will spread over the sky, I tell you, like some tropical storm. France is unready, Russia is unready; only Germany and her marionette, Austria, the strings of which she pulls, is ready.”
“I wish I could. Ever since that Sarajevo murder I have thought of nothing else day and night. But how events will develop then I can’t imagine. What will England do? Who knows? I only know what Germany thinks she will do, and that is, stand aside because she can’t stir, with this Irish mill-stone round her neck. If Germany thought otherwise, she is perfectly capable of sending a dozen submarines over to our naval manoeuvres and torpedoing our battleships right and left.”
“While a fleet of Zeppelins hovers over London, and drops bombs on the War Office and the Admiralty,” he suggested.
But Aunt Barbara was not in the least diverted by this.
“And if England stands aside,” she said, “Der Tag will only dawn a little later, when Germany has settled with France and Russia. We shall live to see Der Tag, Michael, unless we are run over by motor-buses, and pray God we shall see it soon, for the sooner the better. Your adorable Falbes, now, Sylvia and Hermann. What do they think of it?”
“Hermann was certainly rather--rather upset when he read of the Sarajevo murders,” he said. “But he pins his faith on the German Emperor, whom he alluded to as a fire-engine which would put out any conflagration.”
Aunt Barbara rose in violent incredulity.
“Pish and bosh!” she remarked. “If he had alluded to him as an incendiary bomb, there would have been more sense in his simile.”
“Anyhow, he and Sylvia are planning a musical tour in Germany in the autumn,” said Michael.