Such rumours sprang up every year as regularly as the trade winds; serious people paid no heed to them and the government usually let them die away from their own weakness unless they grew stronger and spread.

For in that case the country would be alarmed.

The financiers only wanted colonial wars and the people did not want any wars at all.

It loved to see its government proud and even insolent, but at the least suspicion that a European war was brewing, its violent emotion would quickly have reached the House.
Paul Visire was not uneasy.

The European situation was in his view completely reassuring.