THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS
Karolides' death would set the Balkans by the ears, and then Vienna would chip in with an ultimatum. Russia wouldn't like that, and there would be high words. But Berlin would play the peacemaker and pour oil on the waters, till suddenly she would find a good cause for a quarrel, pick it up, and in five hours let fly at us. That was the idea, and a pretty good one too. Honey and fair speeches and then a stroke in the dark. While we were talking about the good will and good intentions of Germany, our coast would be silently ringed with mines, and submarines would be waiting for every battleship.
But all this depended upon the third thing which was due to happen on June 15th. I would never have grasped this, if I hadn't once happened to meet a French stafi officer, coming back from West Africa, who had told me a lot of things. One was that in spite of all the nonsense talked in Parliament there was a real working alliance between France and Britain, and that the two General Staffs met every now and then and made plans for joint
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