Baring grinned.

"They wouldn't have a dog's chance," he declared. "That's the only
drawback of having so strong a navy. We don't stand any chance of
getting a fight."

"You'll have all you can do to keep up, judging by the way they talk in
Germany," Norgate observed.

"Are you just home from there?"

Norgate nodded. "I am at the Embassy in Berlin, or rather I have been,"
he replied. "I am just home on six months' leave."

"And that's your real impression?" Baring enquired eagerly. "You really
think that they mean to have a go at us?"

"I think there'll be a war soon," Norgate confessed. "It probably won't
commence at sea, but you'll have to do your little lot, without a doubt."

Baring gazed across the room. There was a hard light in his eyes.

"Sounds beastly, I suppose," he muttered, "but I wish to God it would
come! A war would give us all a shaking up--put us in our right places.
We all seem to go on drifting any way now. The Services are all right
when there's a bit of a scrap going sometimes, but there's a nasty sort
of feeling of dry rot about them, when year after year all your
preparations end in the smoke of a sham fight. Now I am on this beastly
land job--but there, I mustn't bother you with my grumblings."