She shrugged her shoulders and abandoned the personal side of the subject.

“Have you been in Germany lately, Nigel?” she enquired.

“Not for many years,” he answered.

She stretched herself out upon the couch and lit a cigarette.

“The Germany of before the war of course I can’t remember,” she said pensively.  “I imagine, however, that there was a sort of instinctive jealous dislike towards England and everything English, simply because England had had a long start in colonisation, commerce and all the rest of it.  But the feeling in Germany now, although it is marvellously hidden, is something perfectly amazing.  It absolutely vibrates wherever you go.  The silence makes it all the more menacing.  Soon after I got to Berlin, I bought a copy of the Treaty of Peace and read it.  Nigel, was it necessary to have been so bitterly cruel to a beaten enemy?”

“Logically it would seem not,” Nigel admitted.  “Actually, we cannot put ourselves back into the spirit of those days.  You must remember that it was an unprovoked war, a war engineered by Germany for the sheer purposes of aggression.  That is why a punitive spirit entered into our subsequent negotiations.”

She nodded.

“I expect history will tell us some day,” she continued, “that we needed a great statesman of the Beaconsfield type at the Peace table.  However, that is all ended.  They sowed the seed at Versailles, and I think we are going to reap the harvest.”

“After all,” Nigel observed thoughtfully, “it is very difficult to see what practical interference there could be with the peace of the world.  I can very well believe that the spirit is there, but when it comes to hard facts—­well, what can they do?  England can never be invaded.  The war of 1914 proved that.  Besides, Germany now has a representative on the League of Nations.  She is bound to toe the line with the rest.”

“It is not in Germany alone that we are disliked,” Maggie reminded him.  “We seem somehow or other to have found our way into the bad books of every country in Europe.  Clumsy statesmanship is it, or what?”

“I should attribute it,” Nigel replied, “to the passing of our old school of ambassadors.  After all, ambassadors are born, not made, and they should be—­they very often were—­men of rare tact and perceptions.  We have no one now to inform us of the prejudices and humours of the nations.  We often offend quite unwittingly, and we miss many opportunities of a rapprochement.  It is trade, trade, trade and nothing else, the whole of the time, and the men whom we sent to the different Courts to further our commercial interests are not the type to keep us informed of the more subtle and intricate matters which sometimes need adjustment between two countries.”

“That may be the explanation of all the bad feeling,” Maggie admitted, “and you may be right when you say that any practical move against us is almost impossible.  Dad doesn’t think so, you know.  He is terribly exercised about the coming of Prince Shan.”