第58章

DOWNING STREET

A meeting of the Cabinet Council was being held at the Foreign Office in London.With gloomy faces the Ministers were all assembled.The foreboding of a catastrophe brooded over England like a black cloud; all manner of rumours of disaster were current in the land, and coming events were awaited with sickening dread.

"A telegram from the general in command," said the Prime Minister, opening the paper he held in his hand.A deadly silence fell upon the room:

"With painful emotion, I communicate to His Majesty's Government the news of a great reverse I suffered the day before yesterday at Lahore.I have only to-day reached Delhi with the remnant of my army, which has been pursued by the Russian advance guard.We had taken up a very favourable position on the left bank of the Ravi and were on the point of preventing the Russian army from crossing the river, when unexpectedly a violent onslaught made upon our left wing at Shah Dara compelled us to send reinforcements to this wing and thus to weaken the centre.Under the cover of jungle on the river-bank, the Russian cavalry and the Mohammedan auxiliaries of the Russian army succeeded in forcing the passage and in throwing our sepoy regiments into disorder.The troops of the Maharajah of Chanidigot traitorously went over to the enemy and that decided the day against us.Had not all the sepoy regiments deserted, I could have maintained my ground, but the English regiments under my command were too weak to resist for long the superior numbers of the enemy.The bravery of these regiments deserves the highest praise, but after a battle lasting several hours I was compelled to give the order to retreat.We fell back upon the city of Lahore, and I contrived to convey a portion of my troops by railway to Delhi.This city I shall defend to the bitter end.Reinforcements are being sent from all military stations in the country.The extent of our losses I am unable to give at the time of writing.Ihave been able to bring five thousand troops intact to Delhi."The reading of this terrible report was succeeded by a chilling silence.Then the Minister of War arose and said:--"This despatch certainly comes upon us as a staggering blow.Our best general and his army, composed of the flower of India's troops, have been defeated.We may rightly say, however, that our power is still established on a firm basis, so long as England, this seagirt isle, is safe from the enemy.No defeat in India or in any one of our colonies can deal us a death-blow.What we lose in one portion of the world, we can recover, and that doubly, in another, so long as we, in our island, are sound in both head and heart.But that is just what makes me anxious.The security of Great Britain is menaced when we have almost the whole world in arms against us.A strong French army is standing ready opposite Dover to invade us, and a German army is in Holland also prepared to make a descent on our coasts.I ask what measures have been taken to meet an attack upon our mother country?""The British fleet," replied the First Lord of the Admiralty, "is strong enough to crush the fleets of our enemies should they dare to show themselves on the open seas.But the Russian, French, and German navies are clever enough to remain in harbour under the cover of the fortifications.We have, too, fleets in the Channel, one of ten battleships and eighteen cruisers, and the necessary smaller vessels, told off to engage the German fleet; and a second, a stronger force, of fourteen battleships and twenty-four cruisers, destined to annihilate the French fleet.A third fleet is in the harbour of Copenhagen in order to prevent a union being effected between the Russian and German fleets.The plan of sailing for Cronstadt has been abandoned, from the experiences of the Crimean War and the fear that we should be keeping our naval forces too far apart.Our admirals and captains will, owing to the Russian successes, be convinced that England's honour and England's very existence are now at stake.When in the eighteenth century we swept the sea power of France from all the seas and vanquished the fleet of the Great Napoleon, the rule was laid down that every defeated admiral and captain in our navy should be court-martialled and shot, and that even where the victory of our ships of war was not followed up and taken the utmost advantage of, the court-martial was to remove the commander.The time has now arrived when those old, strict rules must be again enforced.""According to the last Admiralty reports," said the First Lord of the Treasury, "the fleet consists of twenty-seven new ironclads, the oldest of which is of the year 1895.The ironclads of 1902, the Albemarle, Cornwallis, Duncan, Exmouth, Montagu, and Russell, as well as those of 1899, Bulwark, Formidable, Implacable, Irresistible, London, and Venerable are, as I see from the report, constructed and armed according to the latest technical principles.