The Secret Memoirs of Bertha Krupp

CHAPTER XXXI
A GREAT STATE SECRET

The Great Dundonald Plan – The Menace to Essen – Who Holds the Secret? – An Infallible Plan – England Will Have to Pay – The World Will be Mine

A minute passed while the War Lord listened for the steady tread of his epauletted sentinel on the marble floor and seemed to count the steps. If Dommes had strayed an inch upon the purple runner which he was ordered to avoid, Wilhelm would have rushed out and abused him for a spy. Not until satisfied that the possibility of being overheard was out of the question, he told of the things weighing upon his mind, or of those, rather, that he wanted to weigh on Bertha's mind.

"You heard of Lord Dundonald?" he asked abruptly.

"The father of Baron Cochrane, who announced the death of Gordon and the fall of Khartoum," replied Bertha. "Gustav met him at Brooks's, I believe."

"The desert rider doesn't interest us now," retorted Wilhelm, "though I would love to have him on my staff – just the man to lead my African forces and to help in the Boer uprising. I am talking of Thomas Cochrane, the tenth Earl. Surely you learned about his good work against Napoleon and his exploits in South American waters? For a time he was admiral of the Chilian Fleet, re-entering the British naval service in the last years of William IV.'s reign."

"I recollect now," said Bertha.

"Well, the two elder Dundonalds were scientists, like your father and grandfather. Indeed, Dundonald grand-père made several epoch-making chemical discoveries – I suspect Heydebrand is stealing his ideas on every hand" (Dr. Ernst von Heydebrand, leader of the Agrarian party and a husbandman of note), "for Earl Archie enlarged on the relations between agriculture and chemistry even during the French Revolution; but Thomas Dundonald, his son, the same who defeated the Corsican at sea, was, or rather is, the man who threatens the Fatherland, even though buried these fifty years and more. Industry is indebted to him for discoveries in the line of compressed air, improvements in engines and propellers, but his chef d'oeuvre was a war machine.

"I tell you, Bertha, it looms up larger and larger as the struggle that is sure to come approaches – a perpetual threat menacing the stability of my Empire.

"The enemy – I mean the British War Office – has wrapt that thing of horror in darkest mystery ever since its inception a hundred years ago, and Haldane is as secretive about it as the Prince Regent was in the early decades of the nineteenth century.

"During my every visit to England I have tried to find out from princes, statesmen and military men on the Dundonald plan, only to meet with patriotic objections in one place, with bluff in another. Lord Roberts went so far as to say there was no such thing. But King Edward, when Prince of Wales, contradicted Roberts, without suspecting, of course, that I had quizzed the Field Marshal. He had seen the document, he said; it rested in a secret drawer of the War Minister's safe. 'No other War Office official has access to it,' he told me, 'and it's the only copy in existence.'

"His word notwithstanding, there was a possibility, of course, that the plans of the great war machine might be concealed somewhere about Lord Dundonald's town residence in Portman Square, or in the archives of Gwyrch Castle, his seat in Wales, and Wedell has spent ten thousands upon ten thousands, bribing confidential servants, librarians and secretaries and what not? I had half made up my mind to approach the present Earl, when Metternich, by the merest accident, came upon some of the information sought after.

"Bertha," continued Wilhelm, "though we don't know its exact nature yet, the last doubt as to its limitless efficacy as a destroyer is removed – hence, the famous secret of the London War Office constitutes a peril to the German Empire that only war preparations on the largest possible scale can hope to check."

He dropped into melodramatic style, tutoyeringBertha: "Dost understand now, child, why I contemplated taking over the Krupp works for the State in case you failed your Uncle Majesty? Such would have been my duty, my sacred duty."

"I understand now, understand fully, and I humbly beg Your Majesty's pardon."

"It is granted," said the War Lord, with the air of a tyrant annulling a death sentence. "And now you want to know about the menace Dundonald's plan holds out to Essen, of course. But for your fuller understanding we must first go into the history of the case."

The War Lord lit a cigarette and settled comfortably into his throne chair. "Some two years before the battle of Leipzig," he began, "Lord Dundonald first startled the British War Office by a device for annihilating all fortified places and armies of Europe, should Bonaparte succeed in uniting them against England. However, his plan was so terrible, the Secretary for War refused to take the responsibility of either rejecting or accepting it, and persuaded the Regent to appoint a committee for its investigation en camera. The Duke of York, Lord Keith, Lord Exmouth and the two Congreves were chosen, and their verdict was: 'Infallible, irresistible, but too inhuman for consideration.' And at that time, Bertha, Englishmen and Englishwomen were hanged for stealing a sheep or an ell of cotton. So you may be sure that Lord Dundonald's war machine is no more burdened with sentimentality than 'old Fritz' yonder.

"The terrible plan was reluctantly pigeon-holed, and, as you know, Prussia, not the English, smashed Napoleon.

"In 1817 Lord Dundonald went to South America, having previously pledged his word of honour that he would not use his invention for the benefit of foreigners, and that, on the contrary, it should remain for ever at the disposal of England's War Office. Later, his lordship confessed that he had been tempted time and again to employ his invention, but refrained from self-respect.

"After 1832 he was back in London, and from then on until his death in 1860 he submitted his terrible plan to each succeeding War Minister, and each of these gentlemen declared the method capable of realisation with the awful results predicted by the author, yet too savage for adoption by a Christian government.

"Followed the Crimean War, with its initial anxieties, particularly to my grandmother. To her Lord Dundonald, then quite an old man, submitted his plan anew, which he said would shorten the war; but Queen Victoria hadn't the heart to listen to the inhuman proposal. However, Lord Palmerston had the invention officially investigated, appointing the most progressive scientists of the day for the task. As expected, they upheld Lord Dundonald's claims in every particular, but the inhumanity clause attached forbade its acceptance under a ruler like Queen Victoria, and once more the plan was shelved.

"Of course," added the War Lord, "they were fighting against Russia then. If it had been Germany, that blackguard Palmerston would have hanged the committee that declared against its acceptance.

"That happened sixty years ago," he went on, "and the British War Office has kept Dundonald's terrible plan in reserve ever since. Nor has its exact nature leaked out, though time and again one or other of the Powers have offered millions for the betrayal of the secret. Now, if I had been War Lord when Lord Dundonald was travelling in Germany – but that's neither here nor there," he added gloomily.

Wilhelm walked to the empty fireplace and stared at the lifeless logs, while a sinister and cruel expression intensified the brutality of his features, "You heard of Frederick the Great stealing the dancer La Barbarina from the Venetians, bodily snatching her out of the ambassador's coach? So would I have kidnapped Lord Dundonald, 70 Wilhelmstrasse" (the palace of the British Embassy) "notwithstanding.

"I would have clapped him into Spandau, and kept him at a diet of bread and water until he revealed his secret in every detail – yes, and put to the test, too. And if starvation hadn't fetched him round – why, we have a lot of that Nuremberg bric-à-brac– thumb-screws, Spanish boots and toys of that sort – hidden away in some of the old castles and prisons – " True to his habit of manual illustration, he described some of the workings of the torture machinery by attacking the atmosphere.

"But, as said, it's neither here nor there," he resumed finally. "Back to our muttons, then, mon amie. This is the story which Metternich obtained from two sources: Whitehall and Gwyrch Castle.

"To-day Dundonald's terrible plan plays a more decisive part in England's foreign policy than ever, being regarded as the supreme reserve force, a reserve force such as the world has never dreamt of. Its point is against Germany, as a matter of course, but I doubt not that Asquith would use it upon his own allies if ever they turned against him. Hence, France, Russia, even Japan, dare not act independently of Great Britain lest she employ Dundonald's terrible secret.

"As to its nature, according to certain vague information deduced from some of the late Lord Thomas's manuscript notes found at the Welsh castle, the hope that in the meantime it had been superseded by modern explosives, and that its main principle, or allied principles, were no longer the last cry in the line of destruction, has proved absolutely untenable. His menacing method is as infallible and irresistible to-day as it was a hundred years ago; all your dynamiters, nitro-glyceriners, lydditers and the rest of them notwithstanding, Bertha."

The War Lord struck a tragic pose: "To sum up, in concocting this crime against humanity the English lord degraded his intellect beneath the meanest animal. Your poor child," he murmured, "like my fortresses and towns on the coast of the North Sea or Baltic, so Essen and the peaceful Ruhr valley may be swallowed up in the whirlwind of his enormities."

"I shall defend my boy with my last breath!" cried Bertha, jumping to her feet, "him and all my people. Tell me, Uncle Majesty, why is Essen especially menaced?"

"Its proximity to the frontier is our most vulnerable point. Pray, and pray hard, Bertha, that Wilhelmina remains our friend. If she joined our enemies, Lord Dundonald's devilish invention might be brought to your very doors, through the Zuyder Zee and Waal, and Germany's armoury, the Krupp works, obliterated; the Fatherland itself could be wiped off the map.

"I hope to prevent this by throwing an iron wall across Belgium and Northern France," he continued, tracing a line on the wall-map, while Bertha faltered out:

"And this English menace – "

"How it works, you mean? With the resistless energy of Etna in eruption and the iron grip of the flow of ashes that buried Pompeii and Herculaneum. Only here will be no escape by water; but for my protecting arm you will all be suffocated in bed, or standing or going, as it were."

The War Lord stepped to the window and looked through the telescope fixed on a stand. "As far as the eye travels," he monologued, "one vast ghastly cemetery. Every house and cottage a grave, this villa a mausoleum."

"Save us!" shrieked Bertha. "Your Majesty alone can save us!"

"I will," said the War Lord, "my Imperial word: they shall not harm a hair on your child's head. With the Krupps working according to my plans, I will save Essen and my ships and my fortresses, too, for danger anticipated is half overcome; and when 'The Day' arrives I will move so quickly Whitehall won't have time to put the Scottish nobleman's surprise into practice. Listen, Bertha:

"The Japs disembarked eight thousand men at Sakhalin in a single hour, and whatever these brown devils did my army will have to go them one better. I will fall on Belgium, and, as I told Krupp, hack my way to Calais. By that time, maybe, you will have completed the howitzer that, planted at Calais, will make Dover Castle tumble into the dust. If you haven't, my air fleet alone must pull off the job. After closing the mouth of the Thames – "

"Sheerness to be blockaded?"

"By mines, Zeppelin, admiral. And before they have recovered from their surprise I will have three hundred and fifty thousand men on the way to Threadneedle Street. About the same time King George and Mr. Asquith, or whoever is in power, will get a wireless to the effect that, to the indemnity England will have to pay, a thousand million pounds will be added if there is an attempt to interrupt the march of my armies by using the Dundonald plan, or if same is used anywhere or at any time against my possessions. My admonition will be in time, for to launch an undertaking so gigantic as to baffle even the most enterprising of your own lieutenants, Bertha, will take the slow English months and months; the swiftness of my movements, then, can be relied upon to forestall the evil intended to make our own warlike invention pale into insignificance."

"But the English fleet, Your Majesty?"

"Obsolete, old iron so far as the Channel is concerned. If I have enough airships, I won't bother about George's Dreadnoughts at all, for my nine army corps can be shipped from Calais in half an hour's time.

"As you know, my latest Zep. carries a hundred persons, and I have been talking it over with your Board and the Count: there are no technical obstacles against the construction of airships four times the size; airships can expand even more readily than howitzers.

"And the dream of my little girl need not be abandoned, either," added the War Lord in softer tones, "for the telegram to King George will further stipulate that the Dundonald secret must be turned over to me, and that I will have a hundred hostages to guarantee my absolute monopoly of this war machine – all the living war ministers and the heads of the families of the war ministers for the last hundred years, with a sprinkling of dukes, princes, high statesmen and low politicians to boot. Lady Warwick has sometimes wondered what the English nobility is good for – I'll show her.

"The Dundonald secret in my exclusive keeping," concluded Wilhelm, "you can devote the Krupp plant in all future to the ideals of the pacifists; for the world, awed into submission and silence lest I make a vast Pompeii out of a rebel country – the world will be mine!"

With the War Lady's astonished eyes following him as he strode the length and breadth of the room, the War Lord chuckled to himself. "Lord Dundonald's crude notes, found by my agents, have put me on the track of the secret; anyhow, we are now experimenting in Charlottenburg. My experts call it a liquid perambulant fire, a hundred per cent. more efficacious than my asphyxiating gas for clearing a road through a human wall, as each cylinder is guaranteed to lay low man, beast and technical obstacle for a space of a hundred and more square feet. What do you say to that, Bertha?"

"You are wonderful, Uncle Majesty," said Bertha.

"Invincible, arm in arm with the War Lady," declaimed Wilhelm.