“I was thinking of the correspondence,” the Editor replied.

So I stopped talking to him and sat down to write my last letter to you on the subject.

To resume:  In the summer of 1918 the German War Lords began to have their doubts of a Pax Germanica and saw signs rather of a Wash-out Germanicum.  Things looked ill with them, so they consulted their doctor, a certain person who called himself “Dr. Help-us” by way of a jest.  He proved more successful as a business man, however, than he was as a humourist.  He advised that the “War of World Conquest” was not likely to produce a dividend, because its name was against it.  Cut out “Imperialism”; substitute another word, with just as many syllables and no less an imposing sound, “Proletariat”; call the thing “Class Warfare”; advertise it thoroughly and attract to it all the political egoists of disappointed ambition in the various countries of the enemy, and the German War Lords would find it no longer necessary to crush all existing nations, since all existing nations would then set about to crush themselves.

The idea was voted excellent, and the trial run in Russia gave complete satisfaction.

But not all countries were so immediately susceptible to the idea of a World Revolution.  Victory hath its charms and does not predispose a people to complain; so where the Masses (invested with a capital “M” to flatter their vanity and secure their goodwill) were victorious and content they were to be made to believe by advertisement that with a little trouble they could become even more victorious and more content.  The KAISER and Imperialism had been disposed of; it only remained to get rid of Capitalism and Charles.  The subterranean campaign was developed, and that is what our conspirators have since been so brisk and busy about.

That was the programme; but it is a programme which required money.  And so at last to the Chinese Bonds.

Oh, those Chinese Bonds!  How some people abroad have learned to curse the very mention of them these last many months!  I don’t know where that tiresome man, LITVINOFF, first got them from, but my poor friends, whose business all this is, were running after them at least ten months ago.  Sometimes they were in Russia, sometimes they showed up in Denmark, sometimes they got scent of them in Germany, and I am told it is the merest fluke that the Bonds did not come to Switzerland for the winter sports.  And wherever they turned up they were always just on their way to England; either they had a poor sense of direction or, being bad sailors, were afraid of the crossing.  There was never any knowing in what corner of the earth they would next be appearing; in fact the only country which those Chinese Bonds seemed to have successfully avoided was China.

The first time we heard of them, I will admit that we were thrilled.  They gave a touch of reality to an otherwise over-hairy and unconvincing narrative of conspiracy.  The second time we were told of them we were pleasurably moved.  So it was true, after all, about those Chinese Bonds?