Beneath Gray Skies Read Online Free PDF

fact that we’ve tolerated slavery for so long in an English-speaking country—”
     
    “Would it be any better if it were French-speaking?” the Minister for Industry enquired innocently.
     
    “Oh for Heaven’s sake, Reggie, of course it wouldn’t. I suppose not, anyway,” he added dubiously. “Where was I? Oh yes. It’s a scandal that we’ve allowed slavery to continue there, and I think we should do our best to prevent them getting ahead. We were all hoping that the country would fall to pieces under the weight of slavery, but that doesn’t seem to be happening. And if what you say about Herr Hitler is true, we have some sort of duty there as well.”
     
    “I agree,” said the Foreign Secretary. “If the bloody Americans can’t get their house in order, then we’re going to have to step in. They’re so bloody moral when it suits them, the Americans. All that high-minded stuff about leagues of nations and so on, and that ghastly idea of Prohibition—I can’t believe that can ever become national law, let alone part of the Constitution—but they seem happy enough to tolerate slavery in their back yard, so to speak. And they don’t treat their own blacks that well anyway, even if they’re not slaves.”
     
    “Thank you,” sighed the Prime Minister. The Foreign Secretary’s anti-American bias was infamous throughout Westminster and Whitehall, not to mention Washington, DC. “But shouldn’t we be talking to Washington about all this?” he asked. “I really don’t want to have to deal with them as enemies at the same time as the Confederacy and Germany, if it’s at all possible.”
     
    The Foreign Secretary laughed bitterly. “I would forget Washington for now, Prime Minister. The last thing the Americans want is a foreign war, or even trouble on their southern border. They’ve backed away from a confrontation with the South every time—Fort Sumter in 1861, the whole series of slave revolts in the ‘60s which their people triggered off when the hard-line Abolitionists went north to Canada, the South Texas defection to Mexico in ‘75, the big New Orleans-Mississippi slave revolts in the late ‘70s, and the Oklahoma raids in ‘06. The closest they came to conflict was when they helped the Cuban rebels against the Spanish in ‘95, and then encouraged them to take over Southern Florida. Of course, they did get that navy base in Cuba—Guantánamo or whatever it’s called, in return for a rusty gunboat and a few used rifles. You know, come to that,” he continued, “they never even really challenged us in ‘62 when we won Seward’s US-Canadian war and took Washington Territory off their hands and added it to Canada. I think we have to face it, they’ve no stomach for a real fight with the South. Since they seem to be mostly first-generation immigrants—at least, the soldiers in their army and sailors in their navy seem to be mostly newcomers who can’t find any other work—they’ve no way of getting any real national pride or fighting spirit into their army. I think they proved that to our satisfaction in the last show when they refused to provide us with direct military assistance under any circumstances.”
     
    “Thank you, Sir Edmund,” sighed the Prime Minister. He envied and resented the Secretary’s ability to drop names and dates so easily, but he agreed with the analysis in this case.
     
    “I’d also like to point out,” the Foreign Secretary added, “that their army and their navy seem to be chiefly employed in trying to enforce law and order, especially in those states which refuse to admit the existence of alcohol.” The men round the table sighed.
     
    “That sounded to me,” remarked the Prime Minister, with the ghost of a smile, “like something similar to a sigh of relief that we haven’t gone so far in Britain. Lloyd George’s lunacy happily never took final form here, thank goodness. Brandy, anyone?” He pressed a bell, and a servant