pack of stout German officers in _pickelhaubes_. I fancy you can't
manufacture Holy Wars out of Krupp guns alone and a few staff
officers and a battle cruiser with her boilers burst.'

'Agreed. They are not fools, however much we try to persuade
ourselves of the contrary. But supposing they had got some
tremendous sacred sanction - some holy thing, some book or gospel
or some new prophet from the desert, something which would cast
over the whole ugly mechanism of German war the glamour of the
old torrential raids which crumpled the Byzantine Empire and shook
the walls of Vienna? Islam is a fighting creed, and the mullah still
stands in the pulpit with the Koran in one hand and a drawn sword
in the other. Supposing there is some Ark of the Covenant which
will madden the remotest Moslem peasant with dreams of Paradise?
What then, my friend?'

'Then there will be hell let loose in those parts pretty soon.'

'Hell which may spread. Beyond Persia, remember, lies India.'

'You keep to suppositions. How much do you know?' I asked.

'Very little, except the fact. But the fact is beyond dispute. I have
reports from agents everywhere - pedlars in South Russia, Afghan
horse-dealers, Turcoman merchants, pilgrims on the road to Mecca,
sheikhs in North Africa, sailors on the Black Sea coasters, sheep-
skinned Mongols, Hindu fakirs, Greek traders in the Gulf, as well
as respectable Consuls who use cyphers. They tell the same story.
The East is waiting for a revelation. It has been promised one.
Some star - man, prophecy, or trinket - is coming out of the West.