1911 and the outbreak of the Third World War

The Third World War started with a surprise attack. Perfidious Albion, showing its true colours, launched a shocking and sudden attack upon the German Empire, blasting apart its Northern battle squadron in its morrings in a Norwegian fjord. The six fast battlecruisers of Admiral Lord Fisher's Rapid Force, backed up by a round dozen fast attack craft, secured a great and easy victory, if one can word it in such terms. Destroying Admiral Holtzendorff's flagship, the Thuringen within the first few minutes, Lord Fisher's force went on to sink the remaining three battleships, two cruisers and five large patrol boats, hunting the last of them down outside the town of Narvik, and blasting it apart as the locals watched on, some cheering, some crying, as befits the polarised populace of this Northern colony of Berlin.

The same day that the German battle squadron was blasted into fiery oblivion, Secretary of War, the Duke of Marlborough made a statement in the House of Lords. Denouncing German moves into Morocco, and the recent German-Japanese alliance, his grace, Sir Winston Churchill, said, and it deserves to be quoted, "The Kaiser had it coming".

1911, and the world was to be convulsed by the third global conflict in fifty years. It was the curse of the age, war upon war, decade after decade of hostilities, both hot and cold. Ever since the Great European War of 1861-3, latterly renamed the First World War after the entry of the United States in 1862, and of the CSA in opposition, the fate of states has been in the hands of an increasingly small number of individuals.

Prime Minister the Earl of Derby would later reinforce his Secretary of War by issuing a statement from Number 10 Downing Street that said that "German support for the rebels in Ireland, and for anti-British positions in Mexico, and in China, created this crisis". On the back of the declaration of war, and without doubt sanctioned well in advance of it, British forces from Belize, Cuba and Miskitia invaded the Mexican Empire, and the Army of the Yangtse, under the command of Field Marshal, the Earl French, invaded China.

China, the eternal battleground, war front in both 61-63 and 79-84. But its neighbours, how much changed can a couple of decades make them. By the time of the Second World War at the end of the 1870s, Japan was a new country, an empire under an emperor, having kicked out the Shogun in the wake of its disastrous involvement in the First war. By the time the Third came around, Japan was a world power, possession of the Philippines having catapulted it to starburst qualities, and naval victory over China in 1889 having brought with it regional hegemony. But a hegemony always challenged by Britain, and with the Chinese Empire collapsing irredeemably in 1902, the instability of the warlord states meant that Brtain and Japan were always heading towards that fatal clash. But come 1911, and Japan was the power raging ahead, Germany its new ally, and Britain playing catch-up, its Army of the Yangtse barely holding onto the balance of power in Shantung.

Defeat, what did defeat matter? By 1911 all defeats of the past were now but way-stations on the way to the future. Russia, the USA, even Japan in its Shogunate form, had all risen again from 1863 by the time of the Second conflict. The Second war, 1879-84 saw a defeat for France, for Spain and for Italy, but by the turn of the new century all had been forgotten. France was again risen from its eternal ashes, Spain under its new Hohenzollern dynasty powerful without, yet weak within, and Italy under the breakaway Savoyard splinters stronger than it had been when fully legitimate. Abyssinia, Tunis, Greece, all had now been subdued and the new king was riding high in his martial glory.

Thus did Italy now cleave to Britannia's side, fighting to hold on to what it had, to keep at bay the rapacious wolves of a risen France, and the covetous hands of a Germany whose positions in Egypt and increasingly in Morocco, made it look back towards the centre. France, in Algiers, and the Ottoman Empire in Tripoli ruled with rods of iron and loins of gold, but Italy with its newer hold on Tunis, intrigued against by the French, and hated by many they had come to rule, looked a tasty morsel. German merchants, German warships had in recent years become more popular within this colony of Italy, and the Kaiser's choice of envoy, in choosing his close personal friend THE GAY BLOKE, for the Italian King's Tenth Anniversary Celebrations in Tunis, had shown not how much Berlin thought of Rome, but how much it valued its growing interests within the colony.

Spain was bound by blood Romanian to the German Empire, the Catholic branch of the Hohenzollerns having spread wing and taken root in Madrid upon the collapse of the Carlists in 1884, and the failure of the generals to agree a republic. With other branches of the Borbon dynasty devastated by combat, and with the French and Italians in disarray, Berlin had pushed for its candidate and in the chaos of peace, with Cuba under the British boot, and the Philippines a possession of their Japanese ally, Madrid had seized upon the proferred hand of friendship, and installed the Hohenzollern with pomp and hatred.

Japan would build upon victory secured on the coat-tails of Britain, to move from the Philippines in 1884 to a resounding defeat of the Chinese five years later, a regional conflict that precipitated the collapse of the last vestiges of power within that empire. For a decade peking would fight to hold onto its provinces, but with the European powers landing armies, building bases and reinforcing their positions directly, it had little chance. For a time Russia tried to play the richer cousin, lending money to the Emperor, selling warships at cut prices, but the death of Tsar Nikolai II and the accession of his nephew Nikolai III, meant that the mid 1890s saw a turning point there as well. A convulsive civil war erupted to end in 1902 with the eclipse of the central authority and the proclamations of the generals in the provinces that henceforth they would rule their own affairs, and pay tribute only to Peking - tribute that very rarely began to be paid, and where it did begin, very quickly ceased. The Emperor did not even rule his own domain, a general of the new school having established his rule over the land from Peking down to Tientsin; he was but a symbol of unity for a state that knew none, a man whom half the world still professed to believe ruled his dominions, but for the other half had ceased to be important. The United States of America, to mis-name the half-country, was foremost amongst those who severed all ties with the Imperial Court and accredited directly ambassadors to the strongest of the generals in their provincial powerhouses.

Iturbide's reborn empire was a child of the First World War, of French martial glory and of chaos wrenching the United States, as was, apart. Convulsion was a word that the Mexicans knew well, rebellions, revolution and coups d'etat a common place, always under the Emperor who sat above such things, but still controlled them. Oft-times it was whispered that he meddled in the coups themselves, backed one general over another, met in secret with rebel leaders, or with elder statesmen, always balancing thinly on the rail, but always there after the next convulsion has shaken the country down. But age sets in, and the greatest challenge is now upon him - invaded by Britain, how can he react?

This war would be the first with the new technologis of the air, of the road, and of under the sea. All wars see new technology, but many would argue that the outbreak of the Third World War would be more significant than anything that had come before. This would be the first war where airships played any part - true Italy had had some at the turn of the century in their conquest of Tunis and both Britain and Germany had deployed a few in China, but this would be as nothing compared to the war to come. Automobiles now ruled the road in technological terms, trucks and vans the vehicle of choice, where choice was possible, and amoured tractors a new development in artillery; and it would be a prescient man indeed who could predict where this might lead.

Battleships and battlecruisers ruled the waves, but the submarine was now taking up its place of palatial residence beneath it. A few prototypes had seen action in the Second World War, and Japan had even used one in 1889 to enter Kiaochau harbour and sink a Chinese corvette, but this new war would see the submarine given full and free rein. Whilst in battleships and battlecruisers the scores were easy to achieve, with the order of prominence being simple, in submarines it was far more complicated as many states had older models on the navy lists, some of which would prove to be just hulks, others serviceable but obselete, and yet others surprisingly useful in the early phase of the new conflict. An example of the first was the CSA with around twenty submarines on the list, but only a bare handful of any serviceable quality. Japan proved to have around a dozen serviceable submarines, but it quickly became apparent in operations that they were vastly out-classed, and a crash programme of new construction was ordered. Surprising the world, the Ottoman Empire made great efforts to get their five old submarines, dating back to the mid 1890s into action, and every one secured a kill, two of these ancient vessels going on to control swathes of the Aegean in the early months of the war, the most celebrated sinking the Italian battleship Pisa after almost ten hours of patient stalking.

But it would be the new submarine fleets that would make their mark on history, just as on the surface the modern battleships and battlecruisers were doing. With regard to the latter, the silver and grey behemoths of the blue, it was with them that Britain would start the war, and it was with them that it would anchor its hopes for the coming conflict. Nobody could deny that the annihilation of Holtzendorff's squadron was a bitter blow for Germany, not only removing its offensive power, but leaving the whole of their Norwegian colony open to British attack. Grand Admiral, the Furst von Tirpitz, was loathe to send any further ships to the furthest North, but a raging, ranting Kaiser convinced him to detach Admiral the Graf von Spee's 1st Battlesquadron from the fleet. It would not be taken off-guard, and made the journey escorted by two other battle squadrons, which then returned to home waters. The Graf von Spee made the most of his unwanted honour, soon taking charge of the Northern cruiser patrols and setting up raiding squadrons, and sorties into the Atlantic that soon began to have a paralysing effect upon British trade.

A coup de main cannot easily be repeated once the enemy are on their guard, and though Admiral Lord Fisher once again closed with the Northern fjords it took only a submarine's torpedo to drive him off, the antiquated rust-bucket out of Trondheim firing not very accurately at the London but almost hitting the Albion that was making up the rear. Fisher ordered his ships home, not knowing that one shot was all that the ancient submarine was capable of, and not knowing that one submarine was all that the German navy had in these waters. Five days later a division of German troops put ashore at Narvik, setting up coastal defence batteries, and putting prototype aeroplanes up into the air. Who knows what would have happened if Fisher had pressed the attack - all one can be sure of is that there would not have been any further submarine attacks.

A month later that too was not to be the case. The Imperial Yards had been busy, and six submarines would reside at Narvik by late May 1911. The same could be said in reverse for many of the other powers involved in the Third World War; starting from a low, or non-existent threshold, by the time that three months had gone by Britain, France, Russia and Italy all had up-to-the-minute models of submarines coming out of their yards and into operational service. Some would score spectacular one-off successes - the sinking of the Swedish flagship by the Russian Krelbe or the two Spanish scout cruisers that the Italian Aquila sank in the space of two hours. Many would achieve nothing - the entire French Northern submarine squadron sank a grand total of three ships in the first twelve months of the war.

Trade warfare would change things. It was far from a taboo subject, though internationalists would like to point to treaties that the combatants had signed in previous decades. Once in a war, none of the powers felt bound by such high-minded agreements, and it was not long before rules that they had in fact fought for were being ignored by the very powers which had made the biggest fuss about them. From Narvik, Admiral the Graf von Spee organised the cruisers into effective trade warfare units, whilst in Queenstown, Ireland, Rear Admiral Roger Keyes did the same for the first tranche of British submarines to come off the slipways and into service. By mid 1912 everybody in theory wanted to sink everybody else's merchant ships and hang the laws that said otherwise. It would take only a year from the British attack on Narvik in April 1911 to the British attack on a German convoy to the USA in April 1912 for a new way of doing things to fully bed in - the five heavy and six scout cruisers under Admiral the Lord Hood would totally devastate the German convoy, despite Britain's signature on agreements outlawing such actions in international treaties of 1890 and 1905.

The next generation perhaps would not be so gullible, would not believe that what a country signed up to in peace time it would abide by in war time. Certainly no country ever really believed another, and it was only the poor mugs who had the misfortune to be citizens of a signatory country who might find themselves truly disillusioned. Certainly neither Grand Admiral, the Furst von Tirpitz, nor Admiral the Graf von Spee, ever expected Britain to abide by its treaty obligations, and this lack of such expectation of course enabled them to more quickly respond to and counter British actions in these areas. The same can be said if turned around, and for many countries who found themslves dragged into this war. But there were those who had assumed that treaties meant agreement, or who had hoped it did because they could not afford the alternative, and chief amongst the nations disappointed in a rude manner was to be the United States of America, misnamed Northern powerhouse, sandwiched between British Canada and the always unpredictable Confederacy.

Best Regards
Grey Wolf
 
Thanks for the replies :) I've been writing the second part over the weekend, and hope its good enough now to post! Just got to find the pendrive...

Best Regards
Grey Wolf
 
Part 2

Let us arrange the sides that would enter this conflict; 12 months would be all it would take for the full slate of combatants to enter in their glory, on the one hand, or be dragged screaming once again into conflict, on the other. From previous wars, some combatants were missing - there was no viable state called China, only now regional states whose warlord rulers would make and break agreements as the course of the war flowed around them. And of course there was no Austria, the Habsburg leviathan going the way of that ancient beast during the tumultuous close of the Second World War.

On the surface, this war was all about global hegemony and which of Germany or Great Britain would achieve that end. But other powers had hopes that such a war would exhaust them both, and that they could emerge into the light of day as the foremost power in the world. Many just had animosities towards one or other of the principle combatants, others would find that their rivalries with secondary powers dragged them in onto the opposing side.

It had ever been thus, of course; in the First War the Netherlands had maintained a precarious neutrality right up until the end when the armies of victorious France had entered Luxembourg, forcing the kingdom to reluctantly, and uselessly, resist and be numbered among the defeated. Ever since, they had battled hard for their neutrality, an armed and gardened neutrality that it now was, with a navy befitting their glorious heritage, and an army of small but professional corps, capable of holding off an enemy until relief should come, they hoped, from an ally.

Switzerland, too, had a history of neutrality, but this had not stopped it from throwing its lot in with the victors in the Second War and demanding its pound of flesh from bloodied Italy. Now, it watched the Italians with care, but knew that Italy had greater vengeance to gain upon others, not least the Germans who sat happily in the Tyrol, in Trieste and in Fiume, all prizes from the collapse of Austria in 1884,all prices that Italy would have taken had not German arms helped to pin them down, that time.

Denmark too would look to choose neutrality in this Third War. Heavily defeated in the First, with provinces it claimed as integral wrested away from it, its navy sunk, its fortresses blown apart, it had had to stand by in the Second and see the further aggrandizement of its Southern neighbour – from Prussia to North German Empire, it had already gone, and in 1884 the German Empire it became, seeing the Southern German states adhere willingly, and the ruins of Austria swallowed up with various differing degrees of willingness. Later, German penetration into Norway and its virtual colonization of the break-away Swedish possession had further belittled Denmark, whilst adding to German might. In 1911 it would be insane for Denmark to contemplate war against the behemoth straddling the land to all directions, but there were hopes in Copenhagen that perhaps a few years later, down the line, someone would at last put a stop to Germany’s rise, and perhaps they could get back at least a little of what they had lost.

And what were wars about? Historians still argued over the causes of the First War but it was clear that a half dozen factors had come together to provide impetus, and during the conflict to pour additional fuel upon the flames. The future of the Romanian principalities, revolution in Italy, and revolt in Poland, the conflict over Schleswig-Holstein, the ongoing Mexican intervention, and the war between the states with the secession of the South had all played their part. That conflict had spread, with the Shogunate throwing in with the Russians in a bid to push out British and French influence, and being defeated for their temerity.

Many had said that the lack of any major conflict during the 1850s had simply stoked the fires so that when a spark ignited it, the world leapt into flame in 1861. The 1850s had been a time of spreading influence, the major powers seeking to extend markets, political control, and military one-upmanship around the globe. The war when it came had just added these into the mix, more firelighters into the grate, and seen it spread around the globe.

Russia had extracted herself from defeat in 1863 better than most of her allies; there would be no Polish state, the transformation of Prussia into the North German Empire would see to that, and though the principalities were now united into the Kingdom of Romania it had guarantees from France and Britain, limiting Ottoman power, and seeing defeated Austria as eclipsed as Russia was there. Defeat would bring upon its coat-tails reorganization, modernization and the emancipation of the serfs; to many looking back but ten years later, defeat had been a blessing, and the new alliance with the French a sensible counterweight to German ambition.

Franco-German rivalry had, of course, been a major driving force beneath the outbreak of the Second War, perhaps even the major force, though the collapse of Spain from internal revolution, and external revolt in its colonies was another, and the problems of China a third. France’s annexation of parts of the Rhenish Palatinate and the Black Forest and all of the grand duchy of Luxembourg in 1863 had not sat well in Berlin, for all that it was their recent enemies in the Southern states who were being punished by Napoleon III’s rapaciousness. This punishment had pushed the states into a defensive alliance with Berlin, an alliance to which Vienna would later also cleave, though for very different reasons.

Austria had little direct fear of France, but Russia’s resurrection on her flank was a serious worry, and increased agitation amongst the Magyars a concern, especially given the belief that Russia, for political rather than ideological reasons, was helping them. Italy had remained a firm ally of France, despite the shake-up in alliance since the Re-unification. Rome, now under the Savoyards, saw Austria as the main block to completing this process, Habsburg possession of lands in the North-East, and in the Eastern Adriatic blocking what many Italians saw as their “natural rights”.

Ironically, Austria’s victory had seen her death, the strain of fighting on two fronts for five years, the strain of keeping down the Hungarians, whilst trying to come to an accommodation with more lenient factions within their leadership, and the strain of having to control the Southern front alone, where the armies of France and of Italy pitted their wits against her, all led to a collapse in victory. Berlin had been swift to move in, not waiting to allow other forces to gather momentum, but annexing Austria, Carniola and Dalmatia directly and establishing a protectorate over Bohemia. The Hungarians had at last broken free, but succumbed to civil war that would only end with German intervention, backing their favoured solution, keeping Budapest quiescent as they absorbed their new conquests.

Austria would enter the empire as a kingdom under the confederal constitution but both Carniola and Dalmatia were stripped away to become imperial provinces, whilst Trieste was made a Free City, and cleaved by the nature of this to the center than to its local rivals in Vienna. Little remained of the Austrian navy by war’s end, and what there was was largely scrapped, Berlin starting again so that by 1911 it had a sizeable Southern fleet, run principally out of Trieste, but with significant bases at Pola and at Fiume.

The quarter of a century between the close of the Second War and the start of the Third had not seen peace – far from it. But sometimes the wars were not always what they seemed to be – the most notorious which saw German domination of Norway being a case in point. Whereas one might have expected Sweden to have hated the Germans for their intervention, the truth was that the British and the Danes had been backing Norwegian independence, feeding arms and munitions to Christiania, and stoking up the fires of war. German action had put out the flames, prevented a costly struggle that might have bankrupted Stockholm, and kept the British from getting their foot in the door in Norway. Berlin had seen a Hessian prince crowned, not king, but Prince of Norway, and had installed a government of its choice, whilst negotiating a defence agreement that made Norwegian ports its own. Much ire was spent in Sweden, but in 1911 when push came to shove, it was the memory of Britain’s actions in creating the crisis, and the longer powerful memory of Russia wresting Finland from them, that chose the side for Sweden.

Having managed to remain aloof from both the previous wars, Sweden now entered fully as a combatant into the Third. That statement would not, of course, be completely correct – Sweden had been preparing to enter the First War, planning to do so in 1864 against the Russians, when the war had come to an end more sudden than had been anticipated. The Second War had seen some argue for entry against Russia, but the five long years of conflict had seen much to-ing and fro-ing in the balance, and a mis-timed entry was as likely to end with Russian occupation of Stockholm, than any well-timed entry see Swedish troops in Helsingfors.

The Ottoman Empire, likewise, had stood on the sidelines during the Second War but now found itself dragged into the Third. Its entry was not a positive decision, but rather one made in opposition to others – in opposition to a Russian invasion of Romania, in opposition to Italy whose position in Greece and in Tunis rankled irksomely, and made despite Germany’s alliance with the de facto rulers of Egypt, with whom the Porte had a severely strained relationship.

German diplomacy was as strong and as forceful as German arms had come renowned for. In Egypt, or in Mexico, German promises, and their ability to deliver on those promises, had brought these nations (or bought them) onto the German side in any future conflict. Britain especially resented what was happening in Mexico, markets it had controlled since France’s defeat in 1884 now swinging irrevocably towards Germany, lucrative contracts being lost, new rights going to her German rivals. In high dudgeon did Britain denounce Germany’s support for “anti-British stances” but the rise of Mexican politicians whose rhetoric slandered the British was a result of, not a factor in, German dominance. Above the political fray, the Iturbide emperor dominated things from the pupper-master’s chair, and his decision, his court’s decision, to back the Germans was a calculated gamble. With British troops invading from Cuba, Belize and Miskitia it would not be long before he got to calculate just how sensible a decision that had been.

Berlin was also backing the rebels of Ireland, a civil war simmering away under the surface, occasionally explosive, from time to time exporting its death explosively onto the streets of English cities, but slow enough to be forgotten about most of the time. Berlin’s rhetoric in denouncing the British as imperialists was jeeringly ironic, given Germany’s position in Norway, or in Bohemia, but one did not stop to think about such things when denouncing another, and when you were struggling desperately for survival, one did not stop to question the hypocrisy of a potential saviour.

Thus were the battle-lines drawn again…

Best Regards
Grey Wolf
 
As far as I can tell, the POD is something in the 1840s that butterflies the Crimean War. Something with the revfolutions of 1848 maybe? Or just no Crimean War. I would have said something about the unification of Germany or Italy devloping into a general European war until I saw the bit about the peace in the 1850s. It's hard to tell. This is very interesting. Keep up the good work!
 
Greece had always been a basket-case, a country with artificial borders, stomped on by the Great Powers any time that it appeared to be getting too big for its boots, or ideas above its station. In the First War, Britain and France kept the Greek kingdom quiet by force, a potential thorn on the flank of the allied nations. Greece emerged even poorer, its economy screwed by allied appropriations, its navy confiscated for the duration and handed back a fleet of floating wrecks.

In the years between 1864 and 1878, the years of peace inclusive, Greece shared in a general Balkan unease, but with Russia at first lying prostrate, and then focused on rebuilding its armed forces, the Balkans was not a theatre that any of the major powers wanted great involvement in. Austria's intervention to help the Ottomans put down revolts in the North was not challenged, and whilst Greece stirred up problems in the provinces it would claim as its by right, other powers, Britain especially, would act to chain it down.

The Second War saw the Ottoman Empire amongst the neutral powers, and Greek efforts to bring about her involvement, and with it an opportunity for Greek aggrandisement fail completely when the combatants stood by and let the Ottomans smash the Greek army as it crossed the Northern border. Chaos reigned for the duration of the war, and even when the rest of the Balkans was convulsing in the aftermath of the collapse of the Habsburg empire in 1884, Greece was in no state to intervene.

Balkan convulsions would continue throughout the 1880s and drain Ottoman power but attempts by Greece to benefit from these would again gain them little. France and Russia both lay broken, panting after their beating in the Second War, and neither Britain nor the risen star of Germany had any interest in seeing the Ottoman Empire broken further asunder. There was little that Britain could do directly in Serbia, or in Bosnia, but it could make a show of force at Athens, and it did.

The Second War had also seen the heavy defeat of Italy, a defeat that came not with the loss of much territory (though Switzerland was to act to seize her share) but a serious derogation in her strategic position. Germany's growth on her Northern and Eastern flank would be a constant pain in the neck of Italian glory-hunters, and divert future Italian ambitions to the South. The Aosta branch of the Savoyard dynasty had emerged as kings in the chaos of defeat in 1884-5, and after 1890, the second king of this splinter dynasty began a programme of National Revival that was to pitch Italy to a level with the other great powers across the world.

King Amedeo, and especially King Emanuele III Philiberto (as the Aosta splinter of the Savoyards decided upon in renumbering) brought a new belief to Italy. Under the latter, the 1890s saw the defeat and conquest of Abyssinia, and increasing penetration of Tunis. The early years of the twentieth century, which saw German success in Norway, also saw Italian exploitation of Tunis, and Italian conquest of Greece, this latter coming on the heels of revolution in Athens and a thrust into Epirus.

For a while the Greek War threatened to drag the other major powers in, but many were focused on Norway, Britain was weathering a stormy patch in South Africa, and Mexico was, as not infrequently, undergoing a periodic crisis. When China's collapse came on the heels of this, everybody stood aside to let Italy take their prize, though romantic voices in Britain, France and Germany bemoaned the loss of an independent Greece. King Vittorio III claimed the Greek crown for himself, not even a pretence of legitimacy as in the Norwegian sovereign prince being indulged in.

The years since, Italy had deepened its rule, come up against Ottoman intransigence in those areas claimed by Greece, but never gained by them,. and in relations over Tunis, and cleaved closer to the British side. Fears of Germany, and fears of France, made this decision inevitable, and when it came to war, Italy was happy to stand alongside Britain, allied to France, and denounce the Germans. Rome reckoned that the British alliance would make the French threat irrelevant, and the German one contained; in war, they sought both security and the possibility of future aggrandisement.

Of course, whatever justifications and explanations historians come up with for Italy’s conquest of Greece, it would be little more than an excuse, a figleaf to cover up its opportunistic imperialism. With the China crisis blowing up large, and Britain and Germany at loggerheads over Norway, there was only France to worry about, and Italy’s cession of its Chinese rights to France encouraged Paris to look the other way, and concentrate instead upon enlarging their footprint in that dying oriental imperium.

Best Regards
Grey Wolf
 
Pt 4

Erasmus Pope sat back and smiled; it had been a good war, for him at least, if not for the millions who had died, and the millions more who had been injured, starved, raped, dispossessed, died of disease or left in grinding poverty. But for him, even those things had had a bright side, and his newspaper empire, founded in the days of the South African Crisis, had grown from strength to strength.

With an Australian mother, and an earl for a father, he was the symbolic embodiement of the new British Empire, or so he at least liked to think, and so many editorials, admittedly in his own newspapers, liked to declare. Raised in London, and in the country, he had seen both sides of that divide also, and undertaking the modern version of the Grand Tour upon graduating from Oxford in 1890, he had seen how the new world order was rapidly shaping up. His friends had been surprised to learn that the Khedive in Egypt ruled a virtually independent state, and that there were divisions within Islam, not least that the Caliph in the person of the Ottoman Emperor was at constant loggerheads with the Sherrifs of Mecca. But surprise had soon passed into disinterest for them, but not for Erasmus - his eyes had been opened, and with his share of hsi father's money, upon the old earl's death in 1895, he had a newspaper for the modern era - The Britannic Herald, at first weekly, later daily, and after the string of crises at the turn of the century supported in its stables by equally new publications - the penny-paper Starlight and the weekly journal The View. Not for him the buying up of established newspapers, like his rivals did, he started new publications, with new premises and new machinery, if rarely new crews, since journalism, and printing especially, were professions where an established hand was always an asset.

South Africa had really enamelled his goat, gold-plated his sausage, erupted his own personal volcano - all phrases he had personally brought into journalism, and all of which were used to their full power during that crisis. The emergence of two British dominions, the defeat of the Zulus for the final time, and the survival of the Boer republics - it had all had drama. The Transvaal's extension to the sea in the East had been a shock to London, but not as much as had been the defeat of the army out of Natal, a defeat coming at a time when Britain and Germany seemed at the brink of war over Norway, when the China Crisis was reaching a head, and when Italy launched its surprise attack upon Greece - a surprise more for the great powers, than for Greece, it had to be admitted. Britain could not afford to fight in South Africa whilst embroiled elsewhere, so the Peace of Witswatersrand had been signed, and Natal raised to dominion status, annexing as a protectorate all of Zululand in the process. Alone of all the major British newspapers, The Britannic Herald had had first-stringers out there, reporters, cameramen and artists, and with the non-war in Norway taking up pages of other publications, and the latest interminable crisis in China likewise important but not dramatic from a British point of view, his colourful stories, fascinating photographs, and expert artwork from South Africa had provided the boost that made his newspaper the number one best seller as the new century unsteadily got on its way.

It was not a position that it held securely, and in the decade up to the outbreak of the Third World War the 'Newspaper Wars' had dominated even their own headlines. It had been a time of excitement, and of tension, of successes and of failures - nobody now dared to mention the monthly Empire Illustrated magazine which had lasted a mere six months in the dog days of 1906. But every publishing house had those failures, and he had grinned and born it, and moved on to greater things.

Now he could lie back and happily sip a twenty-year old single malt, for his fortune was assured, his prominence affirmed by his very aloofness from the government that had constantly wooed him throughout the recent war, and his newspapers without a doubt the leaders in their field. He would have liked a barony, as second son of an earl it would have looked good upon the family tree he had had enamelled upon the rear of his office door, but that very aloofness that kept his newspapers out of the mire of particularism, also meant that nobody would back his quest for a place in the Lords. Still, there was plenty of time yet; it would come.

It had been 8 years of war, eight years of tearing up the maps and drawing new ones, only to rip those to shreds with the next twist and turn and commission something fresh. Now, in the first glow of Spring 1920, things were finally settling down. The peace treaty had finally been signed, not until there had been a walkout, a civil war, a short sharp regional conflict, and a wave of assassinations. But signed it now was, and the atlas before him, commissioned, paid for and bearing the insignia of [The Britannic Herald[/i] was the final record. He patted its hefty surface lovingly and opened the leather-bound cover. First to greet the eye was a map of Europe that everybody nine years previously would have thought the outpourings of a diseased imagination.

It was a map that was mirrored now in many facets of his newspaper empire - he now had a Rhineland correspondent, a Ruthenian correspondent, strangle the gods even a Georgian correspondent. He was personal friends of the Kings of Norway, Iceland and Finland, he had met the President of the Rhineland on numerous occasions, and had his photograph taken with the sovereign Prince of Ruthenia. He had attended the coronation of the Hetman of the Ukraine in person, had observed the civil war in Bavaria from the windows of his train, and had been shot at by Romance seccessionists in Switzerland. He had been wooed by the President of Catalonia, the King of Tunisia, and the Khan of Astrakhan. In short, anybody who was newly somebody had wanted to know him, owner now of the greatest publishing empire within the Brtish Empire.

He had sat one day the previous year with a German industrialist in the lounge of the palace in Amsterdam that was one of several housing the delegates to the final Hague congress. The man had been an industrial magnate, a shipping magnate, and a member of the Emergency Government that had ruled the German Empire in the last two years of the war. Now he was desperate, seeing his industries cut off from one another by the reworking of the map, the resurrection and aggrandisement of Hannover, the independence for the Rhineland, the French annexation of the Saarland... He had industrial concessions in Trieste and in Fiume, as well, but had long since been reconciled to their confiscation by the victorious Italian Empire, but it was the losses at home, no longer a homogeneous home, that had hurt him the most, and Erasmus had read just the previous week that the man had killed himself. That was life.

"Father?", his eldest daughter stood uncertain in the doorway, her long chestnut hair tied back in a simple ponytail, a thin yellow dress upon her figure, now merging from girlhood into womanhood.
"Elisa" he smiled, and beckoned her to take the seat before the fire, "Have you finished your studies?"
"Yes father", she crossed one long shapely leg over the other, and challenged him to say anything about it.
Before the war he would have, would have slapped her perhaps, but his were the newspapers who had come to champion the cause of women workers in the factories, women in the emergency services, women auxiliaries on the many fronts, and to call, in 1918, for the vote for women. One could easily say that his eyes had been opened; Erasmus preferred to think that he had simply been convinced by the evidence.

"What did you learn today?", he poured her a lemonade from the pitcher that Harmes, the butler, had left beside his whisky and handed it to her, leaning forward as he did.
"The Pope is an idiot!" she declared in adolescent outrage, "He made a speech from St Peters denouncing the King of Poland for giving women the vote!"
"Yes", he smiled at her fury, "The Pope is always an idiot, my dear."
"But many millions of people believe in him!" she protested, chugging her drink in one go, such was her fury that she forgot that decorum that her teachers were always trying to instill in her.
"Many millions of people are sadly deluded" he sat back and sipped at his whisky, "Think only of those who cheered the Kaiser"
"Ugh!" she made a face, "That man!"
"Precisely" he laughed at her expression, "Was your education all about the Pope today?" he asked

She put her empty glass down, and leant gently back, shaking her head,
"There was some silly poetry from Canada"
He laughed, sharing her disdain for that particular art form,
"Treat it as a memory exercise, my dear."
"I try" she nodded her head, firm chin, firm jaw, "There was also some science"
He frowned, knowing how much she disliked this subject, not because it did not appeal to her, but because she found it so difficult to master,
"What science?" he asked.
"Sir Isaac Newton..." she bit her lip, "I want to understand it, father!" she protested.
"Time, my dear, some things take time - even for Newton they did."
"But I am already twelve!"
"I think you have a few more years yet in which to master it"
"Hmph" she said.

He poured himself another whisky, watching her watching him, and smiled,
"There are very few people whom I would allow to win an argument with 'hmph' " he said.
"Who?" she said, not even thinking to ask whether she had won, perhaps taking that for granted in her youthful ardour.
"Now I have fallen into that pit" Erasmus admitted, furrowing his brow, "The Queen of Spain perhaps"
"But she is not much older than me!" Elisa protested, as if that mattered.
"But she is a delightful young lady that one would not want to upset."
"Hmph!"
"The Duke of Clarence" he said, thoughtfully.

That confused her. She cast around in her memory for something, anything to say,
"He personally led the attack at Tangier..." she said, uncertainly.
"He was but Earl of Munster then" he said, but nodded, "It was perhaps the largest step to his elevation, of course."
"Didn't he kill the Kaiser's son?" Elisa dragged another piece of information out of her memory
"That was at the close of the Morocco campaign, my dear; Prince Oskar was holed up in the mountains and he led the final assault, using aeroplanes in support."
"But he killed him?" Elisa was sure that she was right.
"Reports were confused, but he certainly led the first party to storm the German position, and Prince Oskar was certainly killed in that first attack."
"He killed him" she nodded, satisfied with the probability.
"That is certainly what I allowed to be printed."

She did not rise to that, perhaps not understanding the subtlety. Instead she made a motion with her hand towards the lemonade,
"Please - it is hot today"
He poured her another, glancing towards the clock mounted above the fireplace. Ten to eight in the evening, he would give her ten more minutes of his time, but he could not sit here all evening, there were things that needed attending to.
"Thank you father", this time she sipped at her drink, her legs still crossed, one upon the other, "Mimi was funny today"
"Oh?" he raised an eyebrow; Mimi was Mary Martha O'Hara, daughter of one of the few Irishmen he would still trust after the War of Independence in the final years of the World War. As such, she was a fellow pupil of his daughter's, one of a select half dozen he was having privately educated in this great house at the centre of London.
"She said something about the Pope that made Mrs Kennedy blush"
"Blush?", Erasmus was not sure that he liked the sound of that; Mrs Kennedy was a robust Scots-woman and as anti-Papal as they came, whatever could make her blush was unlikely to be a truly religious issue.
"I didn't understand it" Elisa fidgeted with her hair, "But it was something about choirboys"
"I see", Erasmus sighed and hefted himself to his feet - it was not weight that was the problem, but a weak knee, brought on by falling from off a camel in Egypt; if he didn't remember to put the pressure on his other leg he could just as easily end up sitting on the floor as he could standing upright.

"Father?", Elisa stood also, still sipping from her glass.
"It is almost eight o'clock" he said, as if that were an excuse, "There are things which I must be doing."
"At almost eight o'clock, father?" she teased him, though her voice was edged with confusion
"It will be on the hour when I do them" he said, not looking at her.
She set the now empty glass down and looked at her feet,
"I said something wrong..." she decided.
"Not as such", he did not lie to her, "You told me something I need to look into"
"Mimi's joke?" she was lost.
"It is best that you do not speak of that again - to anyone"
"Yes father" she said rebelliously
"I will know if you do" he said
"Goodnight father" she reached up and planted a dutiful kiss upon his cheek
"Goodnight my dear", he watched her go.

Then he crossed the lounge to where the telephone sat proud upon a table all of its own. Connected to his newspaper's own switchboard, he could by-pass the surveillance that the government routinely placed on all calls within the capital. He lifted the receiver and blew.
"Operator" a woman said
"Agnes", put some warmth into his voice, "I need to speak to Declan O'Hara"
"The schedule lists him as at our Leeds office"
"Can you put the call through?"
"I will need to tap into the Great Northern; it will take a few minutes"
"As you will"

As she performed her magic, routing the call via the proprietary cables of the railway company, he made himself stand still and empty his mind of preconceptions, both those positive and negative. It was nearer five minutes before he heard the scratchy raspy voice on the end, that only the lilting up-tones at the end identified as Declan's.
"Raz!" the man was irrascible, calling him that, but then it was hardly an open line.
"Listen, Declan, I need to ask you something straight."
"Out with it, out with it!" he was eager as ever.
"What does Mimi know about the Choirboy Scandal ?"
There was silence from the other end...

Best Regards
Grey Wolf
 
Pt5

"Italy declares war on Switzerland!"
The newspaper headline was stark before him as the Duke of Marlborough took breakfast at his club. It was not surprise, Sir Winston Spencer Churchill knew, the insurection in the South, and the civil war threatening to engulf Switzerland was as open an invitiation as Rome needed to get involved, but also without doubt it was now not about reclaiming territory lost in the Second War, but far more about ripping the confederation to pieces and making sure that all those deemed "historically Italian" ended up upon Rome's plate.

He bit down on an egg, savouring the yoke, and thought through the ramifications. France would of course step in what it seemed like a good idea, perhaps initially to 'defend' Swiss integrity, but soon enough to take their share. It was what the South German states might do that was more uncertain, and Austria too since its war with Bohemia over Liechtenstein. Things had only just begun to settle down in Europe, now it looked as if they could all blow up once more.

It was mid May, 1920, a hot day reminiscent of the lazy days of old, before the war, between the wars as it was now seen to be. Above, the fans churned lazily around, whilst pitchers of ice were already set upon the bar top, waiting for the mid morning rush of patrons. That was one thing about peace, at least - the stupid restrictions on drinking hours had been removed. Compromise with those Liberal bastards had been wiped out by the collapse of their policy on Ireland, and the civil war there, ending in a Nationalist victory. It had been easy enough to blame the Opposition, wrapped into the coalition as it was, and pressing openly for the relaxations that had opened the way for a full-scale insurrection. The Socialists had tried to score points off both sides, but when Marlborough's government had announced that it was granting the vote to all women over twenty-one, the Socialist threat had collapsed.

So too had his government, swept up from behind by an alliance of conservative elements always personally opposed to him, but the vote once given could not be taken away, so even now from internal opposition, Churchill could smile at his misfortune and plot his own return.

"Your grace", a steward was hovering
"Yes?" Winston looked up at him.
"A gentleman wishes to dine with you"
"I would hope it was a gentleman!" Churchill snapped, considering the rules of the club
"His card, your grace"
He took it and looked at it; Sir Erasmus Pope...What could he want?
"Very well"

A few minutes later the newspaper magnate was sat across from the ex-Prime Minister, tucking in to his own breakfast, appearing in no hurry to get to the point.
"I have an appointment with Lord Barnes at eleven" Churchill told him.
"Ah, well I had better come to the point then" Erasmus wiped his mouth with a napkin and folded it carefully on top of his still half-full plate.
"Yes?" Churchill continued to eat.
"Operation Phaeton" Erasmus said.
Churchill looked him with steely eye,
"You well know that there remains a D-Notice on that; any word you print is a step towards the gallows."
"I know that", Erasmus snapped, "But the full details are beginning to leak."

Churchill sat back and waved for a steward to remove his plate, wiping his mouth delicately, then taking a sip of water from the glass before him,
"Perhaps you should explain" he said.
"You know my man, Declan O'Hara?"
"The SIS has a file on him a foot thick", Churchill nodded, "though they agreed with you on his loyalties."
"He knows people, hears things"
"And he is hearing about Phaeton?"
"Specifically about the choirboys."

Churchill was silent for a moment; Operation Phaeton had been a highly secret attempt to infiltrate the upper echelons of the Catholic church in Ireland during the civil war. Everybody knew that the bishops were aiding the Nationalists, and many suspected that arms and military supplies were being routed by the church into rebel hands. Phaeton had been conceived on two levels, one among those clergy whose loyalties to the idea of a free and united Ireland were not as strong as their loyalties to London, or if necessary to their venality. The other level had been an attempt to get in under the battlements, as it were, and a strong element amongst this had been the placing of choirboys into cathedrals around Ireland. Things had not gone at all to plan.

"O'Hara told you this?" Churchill asked
"His daughter overheard him talking to somebody, and repeated it in class...some of the more unsavoury aspects I might add."
"She needs to be reminded not to talk out of turn" the duke snapped.
"I have been assured that she wlll be suitably chastised; she won't be able to sit down for a week!"
"Hmmm...Who did O'Hara say he had been talking to?"
"Mike Flighty", Erasmus saw the blank look on the former Prime Minister's face, "formerly Michael Flaherty of Cork."
"Ah, him"
"He now runs a string of public houses in North London"
"I am aware of that", Churchill reminded him; after his resignation from the premiership, he had briefly headed up the Joint Intelligence Agency, before it had been disbanded at the end of the war.
"People are talking in the pubs" Erasmus emphasised, "The Choirboy Scandal is going to get out."

Churchill was silent for another moment, then he rose to his feet,
"I have to leave for my appointment with Lord Barnes." he said, "I expect to see not a word of this issue in any of your publications."
Erasmus said nothing, but stood and watched him leave. One never knew with the bastard quite what he was thinking, or quite what he was going to do. But do something, that Erasmus was certain the man would do.


Best Regards
Grey Wolf
 
Pt 6

"We do not think so", King Edward VIII was old and tired; having to think on these matters did not help his stamina, especially after a long day at the desk.
"But Your Majesty..." Simon de Vere was the coalition leader in the Commons, and had been struggling for months to keep his government together.
"We are advised that elections will be necessary" the fifty-six year-old monarch said.
"Elections?!" the Leader of the Commons erupted, as if it were a foreign word in his vocabulary, "We haven't had an election since 1907!"
"That is why we are advised that they are perhaps overdue"
"But....but we won't win!" de Vere protested
"We may at least have stable government again"

Simon de Vere could only stare at his king. Albert Victor Christian Edward, known by his regnal name of Edward VIII, had never been one for deep thinking, but once he had made his mind up about something he was as stubborn as a mule. It was obvious in this that the hand of his Private Secraary loomed most mightily, but even so that fool would have had to convince the stubborn old goat that losing the Conservative majority in the Commons was a risk worth taking.
"When....how....Your Majesty?"
"We will see both yourself and his grace, the Duke of Devonshire tomorrow morning at ten o'clock." the king had clearly been coached on this part, "We will reluctantly accept the resignation of your government, and the need for new elections within six weeks."
"Tomorrow...?" de Vere wondered how he was going to survive explaining this meeting to the Prime Minister
"It is best not to let things drift"
"I...yes, Your Majesty" de Vere muttered, for what choice did he have but to concur.
"Good, you may go"

He blinked, then nodded, kissed the proferred hand and retired swiftly from the king's presence. Walking quickly down the hallway he wondered whether tomorrrow was to be the last time he would ever set foot in the palace. The way things were going he would not be at all surprised.

At the same time that Simon de Vere was having his unfortunate meeting with the king, the leader of the Socialist opposition party was meeting with a pair of dockers, both of whom were of Irish descent. The Lamb and Flag in Docklands was not his usual haunt, but Randy Baker had risen from working class roots of his own, and did not feel so out of place here. Besides, two toughs propping up the bar were in his employ, and he knew that McPherson, his chief of security had another half dozen outside. If it was a set-up, he would get out, that was for certain.
"I tell you, choirboys" Manus McCormack was third generation London Irish and spoke like a Cockney
"Vile tales" Drew Murphy had come across as a lad, and still retained the lilt of his original accent.
"I will listen", Randy promised, "and make my own mind up"
"Can't say fairer than that" McCormack nodded, and began.

In a warehouse across the way, deserted at this time of night, two agents of the Secret Intelligence Service were keeping a careful watch on the inn.
"Clay was rather imprecise today, I thought" Lawrence James was in his twenties, impeccably atttired and lying on old sacking, scanning the scene below through binoculars, careful to avoid the flares of the gas lamps.
"Of course he was, boy", Nick Swift was over twice his age, and called everybody under thirty 'boy'
"What do you mean?", Larry slowly tracked one bodyguard across the roadway, then picked up another and tracked him back, "They're not taking any chances out there", he added.
"Shallow minds" Nick leant back against the wall, his hand around the bowl of his pipe, gently breathing in the smoke, "They fear either the police, the local gangs, or the Irish. They don't see this", he hefted up the rifle that lay beside him, using a single muscular arm to perform the feat.
"I don't like it" Larry said, watching one of the bodyguards take a leak against the side of a shack, "If Clay wants us to slay him, why didn't he say?"
As with many words in common parlance, 'slay' had undergone a rennaissance thanks to the newspapers, the waves of assassinations in the build-up to the eventual signing of the Hague Treaty creating new uses for old words in several different areas.
"He doesn't know if he wants it", Nick drew deeply on the tobacco, "Its up to us to decide for him, then convince him we decided right"
"Shit..." Larry seldom swore.

"This is incredible" Randy Baker took a deep draught of the glass of warm bitter before him, but was not remarking upon its quality, which was decidely ordinary.
"Its true" Manus McCormack stressed again.
"We will need proof"
"What is proof?" Drew Murphy sat back with a snarl, "You want a signature on a paper? They're all dead!"
"I can't use unsubstantiated allegations, no matter how much I may believe them!"
"Un-what?" Manus frowned at him
"He means he needs proof or people will say he is lying" Drew explained to his compatriot.
"Where we supposed to get proof from?" Manus snapped, chugging at his pint, "I told you the man was a stranger"
"He must be somewhere" Randy pointed out
"I never saw him in here again"
"Nor up North" Drew added; working on the dockside railways he would sometimes end his days at the Northern railyards on the edge of London, and drink in the pubs up that way.
"I will see what I can find out to back up your story" Randy rose to his feet.
One of the toughs at the bar immediately rose and trotted outside to let the others know he was coming out.

Across the way, Larry saw the commotion,
"He's ready to leave" he told the older man.
Nick came across to lie beside him, bringing up the rifle, and sighting it on the bodyguard standing in front of the right-hand window of the public house.
"What are we going to do?" the younger man pressed.
"Wait, see what he looks like" Nick said
"What do you mean what he looks like?"
"Just watch, boy", Nick had tired of conversation now that action might be imminent.

"Well?" McPherson stepped out of the shadows and greeted his leader as he exited the pub.
Randy shook his head,
"No proof; we have to keep looking"
McPherson rubbed his eyes,
"Fucking waste of time" he said.
"We will see"
"Bring up the cars", McPherson snapped at one of the bodyguards.
Moments later two large Napier automobiles rolled up, their rectangular passenger sections armoured, men standing on the running board with pistols in their pockets.

Larry watched as the Socialist leader left the scene.
"Why didn't we slay him?" he asked.
"He's not certain, he doesn't know for sure"
"But he must suspect" Larry pointed out.
"He won't use it unless he's sure, and only then if he can prove it."
"I hope Clay sees things the same way", Larry said, beginning to pack himself up.
Nick moved away from the window and snapped open the rifle,
"I think he will, boy"
Larry remained unconvinced.


Best Regards
Grey Wolf
 
Pt 7

Juliet Fenwick was hard at work setting the print in the bowels of The Britannic Herald's London plant. A war widow, she had been taken on in the dark days of 1916, and remained on after the cessation of hostilities under Sir Erasmus Pope's emancipation policy. A newspaper which had backed jobs for women over the cries of their conservative rivals could not sack them now that there was no longer a war on. In practical terms it made little difference - few of the men who had quit, or been drafted, from the printing halls during the war had survived to make it back, and where they had they had been eased into different occupations, still on a good salary but on retraining programmes that the newspaper was running as much as a publicity event as a realistic policy. But it meant that labour relations had remained calm, or as calm as they ever did in a newspaper, and that Pope's publications had been spared the picketing by angry women, the running fights with bricks and bottles and the minor battles in the streets outside them that had marred many other publications, and industries outside of newspapers of course.

She looked at the page she had completed, ready to send. Socialist Leader Randolph Baker was making grand promises about equal rights, but in the same breath he was speaking about jobs for the demobilised mass of men. Sure, it was electioneering, but it made her spine crawl, and she only wished that she would be able to vote for the man who had given women the vote, but sadly the Duke of Marlborough was in the Lords, an outcast from his own party over this very issue. She shrugged, probably she would vote for the Liberals, for all that they constantly failed to inspire her.

In the glass-walled office across the floor, Declan O'Hara was taking advantage of the noise outside to hold a meeting of his own. A tall, lithe Irishman in his mid-forties, he was a loyal lieutenant to Sir Erasmus, and had been his eyes and ears during the Irish civil war, enabling The Britannic Herald to edge out the opposition in Irish reporting. Since irish independence was agreed to at The Hague, Declan had kept up his contacts, and was now beginning to hear disquietingly frequent rumours about the Choirboys Scandal. As a senior member of Pope's staff, he knew what was in the D-Notice, but the reports coming from out of the pubs were going far beyond this now, and if even half of it was true...well, he didn't quite know what. Hence this meeting.

"I will need a name" Declan said for the third time in as many minutes, holding up his hands, "I assure you we will not print it, nor refer it to the SIS - we have our own means of checking on your veracity."
"Perhaps", Padraig had not anticipated this stumbling block, but was now coming round to seeing the other man's point of view, "You need to know that I know what I know? Or you need to know that I am who I say?"
"If there's a difference, I'd choose the first one"
"See these people", Padraig scribbled a half dozen names down on a piece of paper, "They won't be able to tell you anything about this, but ask them about the Bull, see what they say."
"The Bull?" Declan looked at the sinews of the man's neck, "Not to be insulting, but I describe you, you could be anybody, you're not unique enough"
"Ask them about Marnie, see what they say."
"They could say anything" Declan protested, "How would I know?"
"If they don't mention she was raped by that bastard O'Connor they don't trust you"

Declan sighed and sat back down, facing the man across the desk. If that was all he could get out of him, then so be it, he would see quite where it led.
"Very well", he picked up his pen, "You have something for me on the Choirboys?"
"Oh yes", Padraig smiled at him, "I have everything for you on the Choirboys"
Declan doubted that, but smiled his professional smile back,
"Please go on"
Padraig began.

"Oi! You can't go down there!" Ozzie Burke was night watchman, a one-legged veteran of the Second War whose injury belied remarkable speed on the single crutch he wore under his arm.
"Move aside old man", Victor Grayling was an SIS man through and through, from his smart but utilitarian clothes, to the snub-nosed pistol that had appeared in his hand.
"You can't go down there!" Ozzie repeated, staring at the gun, "Who the Hell do you think you are?"
"The government", Victor shot him, and stepped over the corpse. It was a complication, but like all good plans he had enough flexibility in his that one more dead employee was neither here nor there.

Nobody looked up from the print floor as he entered; if the night watch had let him in, then he belonged there. It didn't do to question management, and those few who noticed his presence thought he looked like management. Pausing at the bottom of the stairs, he saw the light on in the sealed office, and moved slowly towards it.

Juliet watched him go, wondering why she felt the need to pee. Either she was pregnant, and damned but she would have to tell those fools down The Castle that she had fallen for one of them but didn't know who, or she was scared. As the first option was not at all pleasant, she plumped for the second, reckoning that something about the man was sending urgent signals into her brain. But he looked normal, he walked normal, he even nodded at a pair of young men busy with the newsprint... That nod, she had seen it before - she had seen him before! She began to edge around the machinery, keeping him just within her sights, glad that he seemed focused on something ahead of him, not on what was happening in his rear.

Tower Bridge! It hit her. The demonstration there last December, women thrown out of work by employers who did not care, the police and government agents standing firm against them, not letting them cross to where the ralley had already begun before the Tower. She had been watching from the Northern side, seen the mass of women charge the bridge, and the gunfire sweep them down. And she had seen him standing amongst the government men, nodding his head at the carnage, his hands on a pistol that had emerged without warning from his pocket....from his pocket. She saw now that one of his hands remained in the pocket of his coat, and swallowed. Something was definitely not right here...

"The Bishop of Armagh!" Declan was somewhere between astounded and disgusted.
"He buggered your little choirboy to death" Padraig said
"And this was a punishment agreed by the Irish Nationalist Council ?!" he was astounded.
"Some of it - those who mattered"
"Like O'Connor?"
"Oh yes" Padraig smiled fiercely, "Definitely like O'Connor"
The door opened behind him.

Juliet watched as she heard Mr O'Hara tell the newcomer that his was a closed meeting, and to get the Hell out. She watched in shock as the man instead drew a pistol and from point blank range blew out the brains of the man still seated in his chair. She watched as the newcomer aimed his pistol at Mr O'Hara's head.

Then she brought the length of piping down hard upon the bastard's skull...

Best Regards
Grey Wolf
 
Pt 8

"Mr Djugashvili" the Foreign Secretary smiled at the Georgian diplomat, "Please inform your embassy that whilst we are aware of Turkish moves into the areas that you outline, we do not consider them to be offensive in nature."
"Then what?" Djugashvili's English was coarse, learnt in his period of exile from the Russian Empire that he had spent in London in his youth.
"The Porte assures us that they are merely chasing down bandits, weeding out criminal elements."
"You believe them?"
"We have no cause to doubt their word."
"I give you cause!" the Georgian snapped. In his early forties, he looked more youthful than that by a half dozen years, his coal black eyes cutting into you when he spoke.
"With all due respect, Mr Djugashvili, you give us . . . reports", the Foreign Secretary at the last minute changed his mind from saying 'rumours', "We will need, of course, to look into them."
"Bah!" the Georgian rose to his feet, "It was a waste of my time coming here"
"I assure you we take the concerns of your kingdom very seriously"
"I think not", Djugashvili said, and turned on his heels, wrenching the door open himself.

Sir Edward Blake smoothed down his hair, and sat back behind his desk, feeling his heart still hammering from the encounter. Why did these new states appoint such unsuitable people to their diplomatic corps? He hoped it would not be too long before there came a smoothing out, a falling back into the natural order of things. How he longed for the days when he would speak to life-long diplomats, to eminent personages who had dedicated their life to their job, and who knew what decorum was! Even if they always lied to your face, he missed the pure civilisation of those days...

"Sir", the door opened a smidgeon and one of his secretaries poked her head in.
"Angela?" he asked.
She was thirty, dowdy, and unmarried, and he ahd kept her on even after the government had decreed that employers could sack the women taken on as an emergency measure during the war, and return things to a more normal balance. For him, her qualities out-weighed the unfortunate matter of her sex.
"There is a call upon the telephone sir, they say it is very urgent."
"Who is it, Angela?"
She swallowed,
"He did not say, but I think it is the Director of the SIS"
"I see", he closed his eyes, "Very well, please put the call through"

A moment later the telephone device was in his hands,
"Is that you, Clay?" he asked
"Yes", Clay was never a man of many words.
"You could at least tell my secretary who is calling"
"I could sense that she knew"
"Very well, what do you want?"
Sir Edward had once been of the opinion that the SIS did a valuable service, but since the disolution of the Joint Intelligence Agency at the end of the war, the Secret Intelligence Service had gone its own way, and had increasingly claimed the mandate of government for itself. It made for an uneasy co-existence with the ramshackle Conservative coalition of Devonshire and de Vere, and for Sir Edward it meant that he had increasingly to deal directly with a man whom he had come to loathe.

"One of my agents is missing"
"Only one?" Blake rose an eyebrow.
"Here in London"
"What has that got to do with me?"
"He was looking into an Irish matter"
"I am the Foreign Secretary, Clay"
"Ireland is a foreign country now, Sir Edward"
The latter was spoken with contempt; Clay had little time for people who did not see things his way.
"The Pime Minister made an exception, if I recall"
"A temporary transitional matter", Clay snapped, "Rather like your government!"

Sir Edward had no answer to that, it was after all true. The Conservative coalition was fighting a losing battle in the election, fighting to stay together long enough to contest the battle on an equal footing. Clay of course knew even more than most people about such things, in his position as Director of the SIS.

"What do you have to say to me?" Sir Edward sighed, giving in to the inevitable.
"Victor Grayling was no ingenue"
"Was?"
"I assume he is dead since he has disappeared"
"Oh..."
"He was chasing up rumours of a meeting about Operation Phaeton"
"Phaeton?", Blake sat back in his chair and closed his eyes; would the thing never go away?!
"You can see why I am anxious if he has been eliminated."
"Maybe....it might have been a trap?"
"For Victor? I hardly think so"
Sir Edward shook his head,
"Clay, what exactly is it you want from me? What am I supposed to do with your so-called information?"
"Get Devonshire to investigate Pope, I know you have that influence."
"Pope? Erasmus Pope?"
"You know another?"
"The one in Rome?"
"Don't be facetious, Sir Edward. While there is still time, get an investigation across the board together targeting Pope."
"Why?"
"You do not need to ask"

The line went dead leaving Sir Edward Blake staring at the silent telephone. He put it down and sighed; this was the curse that he had always known that Phaeton would be. He pulled his diary across to him and checked; yes, he would be seeing the Prime Minister for lunch in just over an hour's time. He would see what his grace had to say about this.

Best Regards
Grey Wolf
 
Pt 9

The election was tomorrow; late June and the skies were clear blue, the sun lay gently on the Earth, and the capital of Great Britain seethed in chaos. Demonstrations, marches, riots and running fights were occurring all over the greater London area as the opposing sides took to the streets to contest the election.

In the 'Lamb and Flag' in Docklands, Randy Baker sat closeted with his senior aides, the pub closed to its regular customers, except a few select individuals invited by name for this meeting.
"These are sworn?" Randy took the bundle of papers from Drew Murphy and flicked through them
"Every one" the dockside railwayman told him
"Check them Bert"
Albert Horn, the Socialist Party's attorney stepped forward and slowly went through them, extracting a couple but leaving the bulk intact. He dropped the extracts upon the table,
"Don't trust anything witnessed by McGrew, but the rest are up to standard"
"Pay the man" Randy said.
McPherson himself stepped forward and deposited a pouch on the table before Drew,
"Value for money" Randy said and sat back.

Drew snatched up the pouch and looked around,
"I'm going to leave..." he said
Randy waved a hand,
"With my thanks" he said
The docker took off out the door.
"I take him out, Randy?" McPherson asked.
The Socialist Party leader shook his head,
"Last week maybe, today no - its too close, and we need these"
He took the papers from his attorney, and smiled.

Across town, Juliet had the night off, but was not to be found down The Castle, nor in the meagre living quarters of any of her men friends from that establishment. This night she was dining at a top French restaurant on The Strand, courtesy of Sir Erasmus Pope himself.
"Wine?" he asked
She looked from the wine menu to the newspaper proprietor, then to his eldest daughter who had been invited along for the meal. Elisa merely raised her eyes at her.
"Dry white, please" she asked.
"Henri", he called the maitre d', "Lafitte please"
"Oui monsieur"

Elisa stirred her lemonade and looked from her father to this woman before her. She was well aware that it was only due to her that Mimi's dad still breathed, but was not sure it was a good thing, not after the beating that he had given his daughter about the choirboy joke.
"Are you a hero?" she asked Juliet.
"I don't think so" the woman said, "I just acted prudently"
"You killed an SIS man!" Elisa whispered
"He was acting illegally Elisa", her father said, "Trying to kill a civilian without orders"
"Without orders", Elisa laughed, "You mean they won't admit they told him to do it"
He looked at her, then across at Juliet and laughed,
"Yes" he said
A shiver ran down Juliet's back.

"What about the election?" Elisa asked.
"Its a free for all, Elisa" her father told her, "But you know that, you read the editorials"
"What do you think?" the girl asked Juliet.
"The Liberals are our only chance"
"Whose only chance?" the girl asked
Juliet was quiet a moment, then looked the girl in the face,
"All of us" she said


Best Regards
Grey Wolf
 
Pt 10

Sir Winston Churchill looked at the newspapers in shock. Apart from The Britannic Herald which led on the massacre by armed police of dozens of workers at a rally in Hyde Park, they were all about the Choirboy Scandal. Phaeton had got loose, and with a vengeance, and in escaping the confines of its D-Notice had grown in the telling. To the best of his knowledge, only half of what was being printed was true, the rest was scandalous exaggeration, but who was ever going to put the record straight? Certainly not the Irish, and the SIS was hardly likely to be forthcoming! If these reports swayed the election enough for the Socialists to form a majority, then he could hardly see Randy Baker taking the time and effort to clear the name of Conservative politicians. Perhaps it was time to emigrate...

"I said Good Morning, your grace!"
Churchill looked up and saw that the youthful Earl of Derby was hovering a little uncertainly over him. He waved the fellow to a seat, grumping
"Good morning, my lord" back at him.
Son of the man who had been Prime Minister at the start of the war, Derby was yet to hold office himself, and if the newspapers before them both were an indication of the way things were going in this country, he might perhaps never do so. Certainly if Baker got in with a majority it might be curtains for the House of Lords.
"The newspapers do not make pretty reading" the earl remarked.
"Half of it is not true!" the duke insisted
"Then half of it is" Derby pointed out.
"Unfortunately" Churchill was not in a garulous mood that morning.

The club was one of the few bastions of sanity in the capital that day, the riots and street battles of the previous week not having shown any signs of abating on this, election day itself. Soldiers were out on the streets in force, but few doubted that many hundreds of people would die before the day was done.
"At least it is not as bad as Switzerland" Derby said, taking a brandy from a steward who knew his tastes.
"Switzerland?" Churchill grunted
"That is what people say, is it not - that at least things are not as bad as Switzerland?"
"They do?", he harumphed again, "You mean at least we have not been invaded by Italy?"
"I do not think that is quite the right context, your grace"
"Hmph"

Churchill pondered a moment on that. Switzerland by now had not only been invaded by the Italian Empire, but by France, Austria and Bavaria, and even Wurttemberg was making a grab for territory of the exploding confederation. It would make the map of post-war Europe even stranger, he thought, but the blame would have to fall upon the Swiss - for their actions back at the end of the Second War. Sins of the Fathers and all that! One did not invade another country and hope that some time in the future there would be no reckoning; well, perhaps one did do that, hope, he meant, but it was a forelorn hope.

There was a commotion over by the door as Sir Edward Blake entered, hat-less and with his coat in shreds.
"Somebody tried to kill me!" he exclaimed, his voice a mixture of horror and amazement.
Churchill got up and looked him over,
"Some sort of sword?" he asked
"Machete I think", Blake had done his stint abroad.
A pair of stewards helped him off with the ruin of his coat, and sat heavily down into a chair.
"It is Hell out there", Blake said, meaning no hyperbole.

As if to emphasise his point an explosion echoed off the facade of the building, its boom shaking the windows, causing a decorative plate to roll off the mantelpiece and smash upon the floor. Churchill crossed to the window and looked out, sighting the plume of smoke across the distance, hearing the first ringing of the bells of fire engines rushing to the scene.
"The fires are certainly burning", he noted.
"It will be a long day" Sir Edward said, leaning back and examining his jacket for tears.
There came another boom from without, this time farther away, shaking the windows less. Churchill turned around, back towards his friends,
"And it has only just begun..." he pointed out.


Best Regards
Grey Wolf
 
please, add a map!

The funny thing is that its not that unlike Europe in 1919...except with independent Rhineland, Catalonia, Ruthenia, an aggrandized Italy and France which has pushed its borders back East.

Russia's even more screwed than OTL, whilst Britain has lost the whole of the island of Ireland. The South German states have also regained their independence, and Hungary is bigger too

Best Regards
Grey Wolf
 
Pt 11

Martial law, civil war, massacres, assassinations, death! The British Isles was not a fine place to be as 1920 wound towards a close. In Ireland, the unleashing of the Choirboy allegations had sparked a return to civil war, an uprising also from within Nationalist ranks appalled at O'Connor and his minions, and what it was said they had done.

In London, Randy Baker had been shot dead whilst claiming victory, a week of murderous riots following close upon the heels of this act before King Edward VIII had asked the Hero of Peking and Veracruz to take control. Sir John French, now Duke of Sussex after his victories in the war, had been proclaimed as interim Prime Minister, bringing in members of the political parties where they would agree to serve under him, bringing in men of business and of trade where not. A vicious peace had been brought to the cities, the men returned from war employed again, now as guards within their own nation, patrols in the street, guards at street corners, squads that hunted terrorists from street to street, moor to moor, hill to hill, and beyond.

Christmas Day 1920, and few had any bounty to be grateful for, but survival itself and delivery from chaos seemed to many a man of God to be worthy of making their congregation thankful for. St Paul's Cathedral, its steps still pock-marked with bullets, its facade chipped and scarred, held the evenig service, the Prime Minister, the Secretary of State for War, and the commander-in-chief of the armed forces presiding, a holy trinity in himself. Beside French stood the new Foreign Secretary, appointed only the previous week after the Duke of Albemarle's heart gave out. Another military man, the Earl of C~~~, a Field Marshal in the British army, was best known from the war for his sack of Heidelberg after the Anglo-French had finally pushed the Germans back.

The king would preside at Midnight at Westminster Abbey and only a few minor royals were present at the evening service, mainly because they held military rank that required their presence. Chief amongst them was the king's uncle, the Duke of Connaught, only surviving son of Queen Victoria, and another Field Marshal in the British Empire. He stood still and aloof, perfectly correct, perfectly perfect, present but not of the crowd that milled around French. Around him men of lesser noble rank, some indeed of none, were drawn up in their rows, singing carols, listening with God-fearing ears to the readings, and convincing themselves that this was just another Christmas, better even than most they could of recent remember.

Martial law was just a phrase, they said to themselves, just a phase, if they got that far in their thoughts. It had ensured the stability of the state after the dark days that had come in the wake of the election, an election that swept the Socialists to power, and blew them away with gun and bomb and ultimately the king's decree that parliament be suspended. Too much blood did run, too many people of all classes, persuasions and affiliation lay dead from the weeks of the campaign, and the culmination did not negate the losses that others had suffered before it came to pass.

Admiral Sir John, Earl Fisher, stood erect, old and rigid, proud of his achievements from the war, basking in a glory passing slowly by his side. Ten years past his prime, he had been beyond it even when hostilities had broken out, but such was his power, his base, that he had still clung to the outer edge of influence, and his war had been a good one.

Admiral Sir Roger, Earl Keyes was a generation younger than the old man, but had known a similar war, if starting from an accelerated base, fighting to retain his post in war-time, then going on to prove in engagement, conflict, theatre and action that he was the man for the job. Ending the war commanding the naval forces at the landing at Vera Cruz, he had stood beside French on the road to Mexico City and basked in the glory of the coming assault. But the German collapse, followed swiftly by that of her allies, had robbed them of their chance and Iturbide had managed to surrender and keep his pox-ridden grip upon his throne.

Of course, many in Mexico City, as in Berlin, had blamed the Ottomans for their defeat, but who did not blame the Turks for something? 1916, mid-point of the war, and Earl French, as he then still was, had been on his way home from Peking, commanding the British force that stopped by in Egypt, reminding the Khedive, as they said, of the meaning of neutrality. A revolt had rid Cairo of the German consul, but still Egyptian loyalties had been misguided, uncertain before the Hero of Peking had come. Or perhaps it was the eight battleships of the British Asian Fleet passing through the canal that had done it, but the Khedive had had a revelation and quickly signed the paper French had put his way.

Their battlefleet sunk by the Italians in the Aegean, or by the Russians in the Black Sea, the Ottoman Empire had been holding on only due to German support, and the German Mediterranean Squadron which had early on taken sanctuary at Constantinople. Having strangled the Russians and bled them dry for four years, the Turks now decided that Italo-British dominance in the Eastern Mediterranean was no longer possible to challenge, and had swapped sides, deserting the Germans, and signing up with the British. London's allies had no choice but to go along with it; the new Sultan xxx yyy decreed it for his empire, and so it would be.

Despite their massive gains to date, and the growing power of their ally in the United States of America, the German Empire had been backed against the wall from that moment on. It had taken another three years to defeat them, years in which Russia had collapsed and vanished, years in which Sweden and Japan had sought peace rather than go down fighting, but by 1919 the German Empire had been torn asunder, and her remaining allies with her. By then, French had passed through Egypt, sojourned in Britain, then gone on to command the army against Mexico at Vera Cruz. Its capture had doomed the empire, and only Berlin's capitulation had saved the throne for Iturbide, though it could not save his empire.

French had been the natural choice for Prime Minister if the party system were discarded, few could have any rational complaint against him. What was needed was a strong man, a confident man, a victor in everything he touched. He may have had victories against only China, Egypt, the Ottomans and Mexico, and only half of those on the field, but his record stood above all others in the conduct of the war.

Sir Winston Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, slipped out before the service was over. Had he been asked, the former mid-war Prime Minister would have excused himself by saying that he would be doing one of the readings for the king's service later that night, but nobody asked him. He made his way into the secure pool and picked out his driver, sitting smoking on the bonnet of his Napier, passing the time with a couple of soldiers whose grizzled look belied a couple of decades of service for their country.

"Where to, your garce?" the driver slid back in front, whilst the two bodyguards climbed aboard the outside.
"Whitehall" Churchill said, "I have an appointment with Sir Malcolm"
The driver swallowed and swung the car out of the pool, heading into the almost-deserted streets. With government armoured cars at every intersection, and lorries full of troops drawn up at strategic positions, only the very brave ventured into the city streets without a valid, commercial, reason.

Sir Malcolm Eaglethorpe was head of the SIS, another replacement, a new man brought up from the ranks by French and the king to instill proper loyalty and ensure that their wishes were reflected in departmental priorities. But Eaglethorpe had been a senior staffer at the Joint Intelligence Agency, before it had been disbanded, and had been something of a protegee of Churchill's. whilst the former Prime Minister had seen out the duration of the war acting as the JIA's chairman. He had all the time in the world for his mentor, and as the armour-plated Napier swept into the Whitehall compound, Sir Malcolm was already bounding down the staircase to meet the Duke of Marlborough at the door.

"Your grace!" he beamed effusively
"Sir Malcolm"
Formalities over, they went inside, and up into the eyrie from where SIS business was usually conducted.
"The service continues at Saint Paul's?" Eaglethorpe asked
"It does so for another hour - but a higher calling has me at the Abbey for Midnight. The Lord will not be stinted"
"Of course not"

They entered the eyrie, and Sir Malcolm closed the door, waiting whilst Churchill hung up scarf and coat and gloves before passing the brandy decanter and indicating that they take their seats before the open fire.
"Your summons was unexpected but anticipated" Churchill said cryptically
"I am glad that I can be both", Sir Malcolm drank deeply of the amber nectar.
"I will be of whatever service necessary"
"Thank you"

There was silence a while before Sir Malcolm passed across a paper file. It was marked "Top Secret" on the outside, and consisted of only a few pages of roughly-typed notes.
"I did these myself" the Director of the SIS explained, "I did not want even Eleanor to know"
"I understand", Churchill flicked through the pages, understanding also that being shown highly sensitive classified documents tied him inseparately to his protegee, "Clay is not pestering you so much now?"
"Not since he has his own Security Police to play with"
Clay, the former head of the SIS had been appointed Security & Interior Minister by French, opening the way for Sir Malcolm to replace him, but allowing the former head to develop his own private army inthe cities.
"Some of these were Clay's agents", Churchill waved the dossier, "Others were a bit further out than that"
"I know some of the names of long acquaintance" Sir Malcolm was fierce in his reminiscence, "I would have no doubt that one of these men assassinated Baker"
"You intend to prove it?" Churchill was intrigued.
"Some time we must return to parliamentary rule; we cannot have this hanging over us"
"We can hope that that time is soon, but the world moves in ever stranger ways"
Sir Malcolm looked at the duke and laughed,
"You should write your memoirs, your grace"
"I hope there is much more to come"
"Volume One, then..."
Churchill rubbed his nose, and nodded,
"That is a passable idea, Sir Malcolm"


Best Regards
Grey Wolf
 
Pt 12

The Treaty of Milan ended the Swiss War, and ended Switzerland with it. Wrenched apart by its neighbours, the centuries-old confederation disappeared in a flurry of signatures. Witnessed by neutral observers from Britain, Catalonia and the Netherlands, the treaty tore the Swiss state into segments that its neighbours were only too eager to swallow. Italy, France, Austria, Bavaria and Wurttemburg all expanded their borders into the Alps, meeting in a new squiggle of lines across the map of a Europe already much redrawn.

The militant powers turned their attention elsewhere almost immediately, Italy looking towards the chaos that was ever China, now that French's government in London had made it clear that any moves against the Ottoman Empire were not welcome. Whilst denouncing such statements as out-dated imperialism from a broken empire, Rome was not so foolish as to ignore the ten battleships and two divisions that the British sent to bolster the Khedive's position in Egypt, nor the advisors that began arriving at Constantinople in a renewed stream. French viewed himself as the architect of the Ottoman switch in sides in mid-war, and viewed himself in having a personal stake in what went on in the Middle East. For the moment, Italy would make its moves in another playground.

Gorged on land from Germany, land from Spain, and now on land from Switzerland, France could have sat back and revelled in the strange economic prosperity that was gripping it, almost alone of all the victors. But cool heads in Paris recognised that only expansion would keep the markets booming, only the provision of a continued use for the products, the engines of war, the materials coming out of the mines, factories and plants, would keep the economy in its present healthy state. Whilst despatching an expeditionary force to China was almost de rigeur, their area of operations did not coincide with that of the Italians, for all that Italy still looked at its older lost concessions it had exchanged with the French for recognition of their coup in Greece.

It was in the Americas that France looked for gain, the ruins of the Mexican Empire, the smashed remnants of the United States, now more disunited than ever, and the chaotic republics of the Northern periphary of South America. From her bases in the Caribbean, France reached out and squeezed, grasping new markets, new sources of raw material and a share in power from Colombia to Mexico City itself where old Iturbide was always eager for a European crutch to prop up his decrepit empire.

In vain did Richmond point to agreements made during the war that left post-war Mexico in the CSA sphere of influence. France had never intended to honour those, and found ways to weasle out of them in an instant. Confederate troops in Sonora were put on alert, but there was no stomach for a march, or a land assault, and the French Navy easily out-classed that of the CSA, even with the new ships built in Britain towards the end of the war.

Few people reading about the Treaty of Milan thought that that was it, the final redrawing of the world in the wake of the Third World War. Fewer still thought that with the end of the Swiss conflict, peace would now descend.


Best Regards
Grey Wolf
 
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