下载掌阅APP，畅读海量书库
立即打开
A gentleman—a Permanent Under-secretary—stood one noon, his back to a fireplace in a bright-carpeted room at the Foreign Office, letting his eyes move over some opened letters submitted to him, and presently came upon the following document, its crest a flag, containing in blue the letters "R. F.":
"To the Most Hon.,
"The Marquis of Hallam, K.G.,
"Foreign Office,
"Westminster, S.W.
"I have the honour hereby to make formal announcement to Your
Lordship that I am on the point of setting up in the midst of the
world a new Power, whose relations with the King's Government will,
I trust, be relations of friendliness.
"It is my desire that Your Lordship forthwith convey to the King's
Most Excellent Majesty the announcement which is the subject of this
Memorandum.
"My purposes and policy in the establishment of the new Power will hereafter appear; and my properly accredited Ministers will, in due course, present themselves at the Chancelleries of the world.
"Hitherto a British subject, it is my will to acquire diplomatic recognition—as soon as such shall comport with the dignity of the Great Powers—as an Independent Sovereign, under the title of: 'Lord of the Sea'. (Address: 'Your Lordship's Majesty', or 'My Lord King'.)
"The domain of my Power will be the sea: and to the sea I hereby set up claim as far as such points of latitude as have been attained by Man, and over all degrees of longitude. Provided only: that nothing in this claim shall be held to infringe upon the prior claim of any nation to a 'three-mile limit' round its coasts, nor to any national fisheries whatsoever, nor to any claim of the Kingdom of Denmark with respect to the Sound.
"The validity of my title to the sea must be considered to rest on the same basis as the title of any private owner to any area of the earth's crust: namely, Priority of Claim. If one is valid, so, necessarily, is the other, this title to land, based on Priority of Claim , being admitted in the Law of all civilized Nations.
"This my claim will come into operation on this day three years hence.
"I have the honour to subscribe myself
"Your Lordship's
"Obdt. Servant,
The Under-secretary, a pale, distinguished man, read this letter with a little lift of one eyebrow, then let it drop from him into a waste-paper basket.
At the German, the Turkish, capitals it met much the same reception.
Nowhere did it reach the eye of a Departmental Head. It went to
Siam, to the Prince of Monaco, to Ecuador, and was tossed to cumber
a basket, or moulder on a file.
But Hogarth, who knew that it would be instantly forgotten, had written it so as to be able to say that he had written it.
At that time he was lodging in a top room in Bloomsbury, and had an underground den in Leadenhall Street, on its doors the words: "R. Beech & Co." Thither in a brougham he drove daily, lying very low, but holding in that den interviews with all sorts and conditions of men, and feeling his way toward operations of dimensions so immense, that their mere project had a modifying influence upon industry.