CHAPTER XIV.
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL MOMENT.
On the morning of Tuesday, the 9th of March 1904, the _Times_published the following telegram at the head of its ForeignIntelligence:--
ASTOUNDING OCCURRENCE IN RUSSIA.
_Destruction of Kronstadt by an unknown Air-Ship._ (_From our own Correspondent._)
St. Petersburg, _March 8th_, 4 P.M.
Between six and seven this morning, the fortress of Kronstadt was partially destroyed by an unknown air-ship, which was first sighted approaching from the westward at a tremendous speed.
Four shots in all were fired upon the fortress, and produced the most appalling destruction. There was no smoke or flame visible from the guns of the air-ship, and the explosives with which the missiles were charged must have been far more powerful than anything hitherto used in warfare, as in the focus of the explosion masses of iron and steel and solid masonry were instantly reduced to powder.
Two shots were fired as the strange vessel approached, and two as she left the fortress. The two latter exploded over one of the powder magazines, dissolved the steel roof to dust, and ignited the whole contents of the magazine, blowing that portion of the fortification bodily into the sea. At least half the garrison has disappeared, most of the unfortunate men having been practically annihilated by the terrific force of the explosions.
The air-ship was not of the navigable balloon type, and is described by the survivors as looking more like a flying torpedo-boat than anything else. She flew no flag, and there is no clue to her origin.
After destroying the fortress, she ascended several thousand feet, and continued her eastward course at such a prodigious speed, that in less than five minutes she was lost to sight.
The excitement in St. Petersburg almost reaches the point of panic. All efforts to keep the news of the disaster secret have completely failed, and I have therefore received permission to send this telegram, which has been revised by the Censorship, and may therefore be accepted as authentic.
Within an hour of the appearance of this telegram, which appearedonly in the _Times_, the Russian Censorship having refused to allowany more to be despatched, the astounding news was flying over thewires to every corner of the world.
The _Times_ had a lengthy and very able article on the subject,which, although by no means alarmist in tone, told the world, ingrave and weighty sentences, that there could now be no doubt butthat the problem of aerial navigation had been completely solved, andthat therefore mankind stood confronted by a power that waspractically irresistible, and which changed the whole aspect ofwarfare by land and sea.
In the face of this power, the fortresses, armies, and fleets of theworld were useless and helpless. The destruction of Kronstadt hadproved that to demonstration. From a height of several thousand feet,and a distance of nearly seven miles, the unknown air-vessel hadpractically destroyed, with four shots from her mysterious,smokeless, and flameless guns, the strongest fortress in Europe. Ifit could do that, and there was not the slightest doubt but that ithad done so, it could destroy armies wholesale without a chance ofreprisals, sink fleets, and lay cities in ruins, at the leisure ofthose who commanded it.
And here arose the supreme question of the hour--a question besidewhich all other questions of national or international policy sankinstantly into insignificance--Who were those who held this new andappalling power in their hands? It was hardly to be believed thatthey were representatives of any regularly-constituted nationalPower, for, although the air was full of rumours of war, there was atpresent unbroken peace all over the world.
Even in the hands of a recognised Power, the possession of such afrightful engine of destruction could not be viewed by the rest ofthe world with anything but the gravest apprehension, for that Power,however insignificant otherwise, would now be in a position toterrorise any other nation, or league of nations, however great.Manifestly those who had built the one air-vessel that had been seen,and had given such conclusive proof of her terrible powers, couldconstruct a fleet if they chose to do so, and then the world would beat their mercy.
If, however, as seemed only too probable, the machine was in thehands of a few irresponsible individuals, or, still worse, in thoseof such enemies of humanity as the Nihilists, or that yet moremysterious and terrible society who were popularly known as theTerrorists, then indeed the outlook was serious beyond forecast ordescription. At any moment the forces of destruction and anarchymight be let loose upon the world, in such fashion that little lessthan the collapse of the whole fabric of Society might be expected asthe result.
* * * * *
The above necessarily brief and imperfect digest gives only theheadings of an article which filled nearly two columns of the_Times_, and it is needless to say that such an article in theleading columns of the most serious and respectable newspaper in theworld produced an intense impression wherever it was read.
Of course the telegram was instantly copied by the evening papers,which ran out special editions for the sole purpose of reproducingit, with their own comments upon it, which, after all, were not muchmore original than the telegram. Meanwhile the _Berliner Tageblatt_,the _Newe Freie Presse_, the _Koelnische Zeitung_, and the _Journaldes Debats_ had received later and somewhat similar telegrams, andhad given their respective views of the catastrophe to the world.
By noon all the capitals of Europe were in a fever of expectation andapprehension. The cables had carried the news to America and India;and when the evening of the same day brought the telegraphic accountof the extraordinary occurrence at Tiumen in the grey dusk of theearly morning, proving almost conclusively that the rescue had beeneffected by the same agency that had destroyed Kronstadt, and that,worse than all, the air-vessel was at the command of Natas, theunknown Chief of the mysterious Terrorists, excitement rose almost tofrenzy, and everywhere the wildest rumours were accepted as truth.
In a word, the "psychological moment" had come all over Europe, themoment in which all men were thinking of the same thing, discussingthe same event, and dreading the same results. To have found aparallel state of affairs, it would have been necessary to go backmore than a hundred years, to the hour when the head of Louis XVI.fell into the basket of the guillotine, and the monarchies of Europesprang to arms to avenge his death.
Meanwhile other and not less momentous events had, unknown to thenewspapers or the public, been taking place in three very differentparts of the world.
On the evening of Saturday, the 6th, Lord Alanmere had called uponMr. Balfour in Downing Street, and laid the duplicates of the secrettreaty between France and Russia, and copies of all the memorandaappertaining to it, before him, and had convinced him of theirauthenticity. At the same time he showed him plans of thewar-balloons, of which a fleet of fifty would within a few days be atthe command of the Tsar.
The result of this interview was a meeting of a Cabinet Council, andthe immediate despatch of secret orders to mobilise the fleet and thearmy, to put every available ship into commission, and to double thestrength of the Mediterranean Squadron at once. That evening threeQueen's messengers left Charing Cross by the night mail, one forBerlin, one for Vienna, and one for Rome, each of them bearing a copyof the secret treaty.
On Monday morning a Council of Ministers was held at the PeterhofPalace in St. Petersburg, presided over by the Tsar, and convened todiscuss the destruction of Kronstadt.
At this Council it was announced that the fleet of war-balloons wouldbe ready to take the air in a week's time from then, and that theconcentration of troops on the Afghan frontier was as complete as itcould be without provoking immediate hostilities with Britain. Infact, so close were the Cossacks and the Indian troops to each other,both on the Pamirs and on the western slopes of the Hindu Kush, thata collision might be expected at any moment.
The Council of the Tsar decided to let matters take their course int
he East, and to make all arrangements with France to simultaneouslyattack the Triple Alliance as soon as the war-balloons had beensatisfactorily tested.
Soon after daybreak on Wednesday, the 10th, an affair of outpoststook place near the northern end of the Sir Ulang Pass of the HinduKush, between two considerable bodies of Cossacks and Ghoorkhas, inwhich, after a stubborn fight, the Russians gave way before themagazine fire of the Indian troops, and fled, leaving nearly a fourthof their number on the field.
The news of this encounter reached London on Wednesday night, and waspublished in the papers on Thursday morning, together with theintelligence that the fight had been watched from a height of nearlythree thousand feet by a small party of men and women in an air-ship,evidently a vessel of war, from the fact that she carried four longguns. She took no part in the fight, and as soon as it was over wentoff to the south-west at a speed which carried her out of sight in afew minutes.
The Angel of the Revolution: A Tale of the Coming Terror Page 15
