"
"Telautomatics?" I repeated.
"Yes. There is something weird, fascinating about the very idea. I
sit up here safely in this room, turning switches, pressing
buttons, depressing levers. Ten miles away a vehicle, a ship, an
aeroplane, a submarine obeys me. It may carry enough of the latest
and most powerful explosive that modern science can invent,
enough, if exploded, to rival the worst of earthquakes. Yet it
obeys my will. It goes where I direct it. It explodes where I want
it. And it wipes off the face of the earth anything which I want
annihilated.
"That's telautomatics, and that is what has been stolen from our
navy and dimly sensed by you clever newspaper men, from whom even
the secret service can't quite hide everything. The publication of
the rumour alone that the government knows it has lost something
has put the secret service in a hole. What might have been done
quietly and in a few days has got to be done in the glare of the
limelight and with the blare of a brass band--and it has got to be
done right away, too.
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