The Ozark spectator., 1916-07-14

down to the roots of things. He got little further down than he wanted
 1 am giving you what he told me as well as l could make it out. Away be hind all the governments and the ar mics there was big subterranean movement going on engineered by very dangerous people, He had come on it by accident It fascinated him He went further and then got caught.
 I gathered that most of the people in it were the sort of educated anarchists lhat make revolutions, but that besides them there were financiers who were playing for money.
 A clever man can make big profits on a falling rnarket, and 1t suited the plans of both classes to set Europe by the ears. He told me some queer things that explained lot that had puzzled me-things that happened in the Balkan war; how one state sud denly came out on top; why alliances were made and broken; why certain men disappeared and where the sinews of war came from.
 The aim of the whole conspiracy was to get Russia and Germany at logger heads
 When I asked why, he said that the anarchist lot thought it would give them their chance. Everything would be in the melting pot and they looked to see a new world emerge. The cap italists would rake in the shekels and make fortunes by buying up wreckage
 Capital, he said, had no conscience and no fatherland; besides, the Jew was behind it. and the Jew hated Rus sia.
 Do you wonder?" he cried. For 300 years they have been persecuted, and this is the return match for the pogroms. The Jew is everywhere, but you have to go far down the back stairs to find him.
 Take any big Teutonic business con cern. If you have dealings with it the first man you meet is Prince von Some thing, an elegant young man who talks Eton and Harrow English. But he cuts no ice. If your business is big you get behind him and find progna thous Westphalian.
 He is the German business man that gives your English papers the shakes But if you're on the biggest kind of job and are bound to get to the real boss, ten to one you are brought up against little, white faced Jew ill q bath chair, with an eye like rattle snake. Yes. sir, he is the man who is ruling the world just now, and he has his knife in the empire of the cZar be cause his father was logged in some one horse location on the Nolga.'
 1 could not help saying that his Jew anarchists seemed to have got left be hind little.
 Yes and mo- he said. They won up to q point, but they struck bigger thing than money. a thing that couldn't be bougbt-the old elemental fighting instincts of man. If you're going to be killed you invent some kind of flag and country to fight for. and if you survive you get to love the thing. These fool ish devils of soldiers have found some thing they care for and that has upset the pretty plan laid in Berlin and Nien- na. But my friends haven't played their last card by long sight. They have got the ace up their sleeves, and unless l can keep alive for a month they are going to play 1t and win.'
 But I thought you were dead" put in.
 Death is the door of life" he smiled I'm coming to that, but I've got to put you wise to lot of things first. If you read your newspaper I guess you know the name of Constantine Karoides?"
 sat up at that. for l had been read ing about him that very afternoon.
 He is the man that has wrecked ali their games. He Is the one big brain in the whole show. and he happens also to he an honest man. Therefore he has been marked down these twelve months past l found that out-not that it was difficult. for any fool could guess as much-but I found out the way they were going to get him, and that knowledge was deadly. That's why have had to decease."
 He had another drink, and I mixed it for him myself, for l was getting in. terested in the beggar.
 They cant get him in his own land. for he has bodyguard of Epirotes that would skin their grandmothers. But on the 10th day of June he is coming to this city. The British for eign office has taken to having interna tional tea parties. and the biggest of them is due on that date. Now, Karo- lides is reckoned the principal guest. and if my friends have their way he will never return to his admirtng countrymen.'
 That's simple enough anyhow" l said You can warn him and keep him at home
 And play their gamer he asked sharply. If he does not come they win. for he's the only man that can straightcn out the tangle. And if his government is warned he won't come. for he does not know how big the stakes will be on June l5.'