Page:Lesbia Newman - Dalton - 1889.djvu/192

 The crisis schemed for came about; the dynamite scare in the British Islands increased and spread over town and country. The fact was that nitro-glycerine had of late been very largely used at Woolwich to try the new long pneumatic guns throwing dynamite shells, which the Americans, by whom they were invented, had some time since adopted for their navy, but which short-sighted trade interests had opposed in England, so that the Admiralty was only now in the stage of experiment with them. However, the explosive for these performances was kept in large quantities, a considerable fraction of which was secretly but regularly sold to the other patriots by Government officials who loved their country so long as it paid them well, but naturally did not allow flighty music-hall sentiments to interfere with the solid realities of personal profit. No doubt a large percentage of those who manipulated this business were Irish Americans, certainly those who conducted the explosions were so, that class generally being endued with more nerve than their congeners in the little island, many of whom were apt to be somewhat squeamish about scattering destruction in a mixed crowd of harmless people.

But anyhow, these gentlemen took their pleasure in their own way, and were not in any sense or manner the emissaries of the American Government or nation. But the party in power, owing perhaps to its fiasco in Asia Minor, was in a quarrelsome mood, and communications, in an overbearing tone, were addressed to Washington on the subject. The Washington Government replied shortly that it had nothing to do with the matter, and could not undertake duties which belonged to the police in England. Here the dispute should have ended, only that to drop it would not have suited the purpose of the agitators. The wire-pullers strained their resources to improve the occasion, and before long there was a brisk interchange of unfriendly despatches