THE LADY. Oh, your courage will only tempt you into danger. She
may get the list after all. It is true that the guns are moved.
But she would win her bet.

AUGUSTUS [cautiously]. You did not say that the guns were moved.
You said that Blueloo had ordered them to be moved.

THE LADY. Well, that is the same thing, isn't it?

AUGUSTUS. Not quite--at the War Office. No doubt those guns WILL
be moved: possibly even before the end of the war.

THE LADY. Then you think they are there still! But if the German
War Office gets the list--and she will copy it before she gives
it back to Blueloo, you may depend on it--all is lost.

AUGUSTUS [lazily]. Well, I should not go as far as that.
[Lowering his voice.] Will you swear to me not to repeat what I
am going to say to you; for if the British public knew that I had
said it, I should be at once hounded down as a pro-German.

THE LADY. I will be silent as the grave. I swear it.

AUGUSTUS [again taking it easily]. Well, our people have for some
reason made up their minds that the German War Office is
everything that our War Office is not--that it carries
promptitude, efficiency, and organization to a pitch of
completeness and perfection that must be, in my opinion,
destructive to the happiness of the staff. My own view--which you
are pledged, remember, not to betray--is that the German War