Page:The Prime Minister by Hall Caine.djvu/18

x Englishwoman and a member of the "empire of humanity," she, who had come to destroy the Prime Minister, remained to save him, and so, by a great and moving act of self-sacrifice, to bring nearer the day of peace.

This sequel to the foreshadowed tragedy of the tea-party took such hold of me that I had to put aside the work on which I was engaged and go on forthwith with the drama which had shaped itself, so that within six or seven days, working continuously and feverishly, I had written the first draft of a play in four acts. But having got the subject off my mind, I put the manuscript among many similar papers in my bag, and thought no more about it for fully three years. Then the war began, and in the earliest days of it I availed myself of the friendly acquaintance I have enjoyed through many years with the present Prime Minister (then Chancellor of the Exchequer) to go down to breakfast with him, in order to ask if there was any way (such as by propaganda) in which a man who was too old for military duty, but was not unknown abroad, might be of service to his country. At that breakfast (no one else being present except a fellow-author) the Prime Minister told a thrilling story—the story, which I trust I have not done wrong in making public already, of the Cabinet on the day of the Ultimatum, waiting in Mr. Asquith's room for the answer that was expected from Berlin before midnight, but overlooking the difference between mid-European time and Greenwich time, so that Great Britain was an hour at war before the country was aware of it. Listening to that story, told on the spot in the Prime Minister's vivid way, I remembered my play and thought, "That's my