"In the first place, your men are inexhaustible. If we kill one class you call out another; and anyway one-half of those we kill get well again, and the net result is that you have more than ever."

"Precisely," said the Count.

"As to food," I continued, "you are absolutely invulnerable. What with acorns, thistles, tanbark, glue, tickets, coupons, and certificates, you can go on for ever."

"We can," he said.

"Then for money you use I.O.U.'s. Anybody with a lead pencil can command all the funds he wants. Moreover, your soldiers at the front are getting dug in deeper and deeper: last spring they were fifty feet under ground: by 1918 they will be nearly 200 feet down. Short of mining for them, we shall never get them out."

"Never," said von Boobenstein with great firmness.

"But there is one thing that I don't quite understand. Your navy, your ships. There, surely, we have you: sooner or later that whole proud fleet in the Kiel Canal will come out under fire of our guns and be sunk to the bottom of the sea. There, at least, we conquer."

Von Boobenstein broke into loud laughter.

"The fleet!" he roared, and his voice was almost hysterical and overstrung, as if high living on lobster-coupons and over-smoking of Tannhausers was undermining his nerves. "The fleet! Is it possible you do not know? Why all Germany knows it. Capture our fleet! Ha! Ha! It now lies fifty miles inland. We have filled in the canal—pushed in the banks. The canal is solid land again, and the fleet is high and dry. The ships are boarded over and painted to look like German inns and breweries. Prinz Adelbert is disguised as a brewer, Admiral von Tirpitz is made up as a head waiter, Prince Heinrich is a bar tender, the sailors are dressed up as chambermaids. And some day when Jellicoe and his men are coaxed ashore, they will drop in to drink a glass of beer, and then—pouf! we will explode them all with a single torpedo! Such is the naval strategy of our scientists! Are we not a nation of sailors?"

Von Boobenstein's manner had grown still wilder and more hysterical. There was a queer glitter in his eyes.

I thought it better to soothe him.

"I see," I said, "the Allies are beaten. One might as well spin a coin for heads or tails to see whether we abandon England now or wait till you come and take it."

As I spoke, I took from my pocket an English sovereign that I carry as a lucky-piece, and prepared to spin it in the air.

Von Boobenstein, as he saw it, broke into a sort of hoarse shriek.

"Gold! gold!" he cried. "Give it to me!"

"What?" I exclaimed.