“The weak point of the business was, as Dundonald himself declared, that it was so simple—­as everybody knows now—­that its first use would tell the secret and put it in the hands of other nations.  Therefore the committee recommended that this incipient destruction should be stowed away and kept secret, so that no power more unscrupulous than England should get it and use it for the annihilation of England and the conquest of the world.  Also the committee persuaded the Earl before he went on his South American adventure to swear formally that he would never disclose his device except in the service of England.  He kept that oath.

“Well, the formula for this affair was, of course, in pigeonholes or vaults in the British Admiralty ever since the committee in 1811 had examined and refused it.  But there was also, unknown to the public, another copy.  The Earl was with my great-grandfather, his kinsman and lifelong friend, shortly before his death, and he gave this copy to him with certain conditions.  The old chap had an ungovernable temper, quarreled right and left, don’t you know, his life long, and at this time and until he died he was not on speaking terms with his son Thomas, who succeeded him as Earl, or indeed with any of the three other sons.  Which accounts for his trusting to my great-grandfather the future of his invention.  I found a quaint note with the papers.  He said in effect that he had come to believe with the committee that it was quite too shocking for decent folk.  Yet, he suggested, the time might come when England was in straits and only a sweeping blow could serve her.  If that time should come it would be a joy to him in heaven or in hell—­he said—­to think that a man of his name had used the work of his brains to save England.

“Therefore, the Earl asked my grandfather to guard this gigantic secret and to see to it that one man in each generation of Cochranes should know it and have it at hand for use in an emergency.  My grandfather came into the papers when he came of age, and after him my father; I was due to read them when I should be twenty-one.  I was only twenty in 1917.  But the papers were mine, and from the moment it flashed to me what Kitchener meant I didn’t hesitate.  It was this enormous power which was placed suddenly in the hands of a lad of twenty.  The Sirdar placed it there.

“I went over the business in an hour—­it was simple, like most big things.  You know what it was, of course; everybody knows now.  Wasn’t it extraordinary that in five thousand years of fighting no one ever hit on it before?  I rushed to the War Office.

“Well, the thing came off.  At first they pooh-poohed me as an unbalanced boy, but they looked up the documents in the Admiralty and there was no question.  It isn’t often a youngster is called into the councils of the government, and I’ve wondered since how I held my own.  I’ve come to believe that I was merely a body for Kitchener’s spirit.  I was conscious of no fatigue, no uncertainty.  I did things as the Sirdar might have done them, and it appears to me only decent to realize that he did do them, and not I. You probably know the details.”