To: President Kusharis
From: His Imperial Majesty, King Righello X
Subj: Coal Technology
We have the secret of electricity which could be of use in mechanizing drills or minecarts, allowing for faster extracting. We are willing to trade the zinc for the high-quality coal.
Had you looked over my TEP proposal? Would you be willing to join it? It doesn't seem to be catching much approval from the other Toulon Pact members.
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Righello was in the study of his palace. There was a fire in the fireplace and he sat in his leather armchair, smoking his pipe, reading Il Manifesto and drinking some tea. Soon, lady Benevolenza tapped gently on the door.
Lady Benevolenza was a delicate woman of 47 years of age. She had reddish-brown hair that was slightly grayed up in a bun, and she walked in her Chinese silk robe and slippers. The gentle patting of her feet disturbed Righello. She reached around the chair and began to hug him.
"You did an amazing job in South America," she began. "140,000 prisoners has to be some kind of record."
"Yes, but the fact remains, peace gets us nowhere," Righello stated, puffing a part of his pipe.
"Prosperity, home construction...our nation needs the time to build up the army, don't you think?"
"The army is rather useless for us, seeing as a general European war is virtually impossible, especially with the leave of Prime Minister Sanford."
The fire crackled a little bit. She sighed and waited a moment before speaking. Righello put his newspaper and pipe down for a minute to relight his pipe.
"Maybe we should take advantage of it."
Lady Benevolenza walked around, leaned forward towards Righello with her arms on the armrests and her hands on his hands. "Great Britain and her navy wouldn't be able to respond until they find a successor. The army could be deployed to almost anywhere, we could dominate Germany and Russia with our Greek and French allies. It would be a walkover."
Righello pulled his hands out from under hers and put them on her cheeks, and kissed her softly. "My dear, we have more important things to do than plan for a European war, like improving our colonies. Rome may be able to fight in Europe but she would get the short end of the stick and it wouldn't help us any to be surrounded by great powers with nowwhere to look."
She seemed furious. "You said yourself that peace gets us nowhere! We should march for war, not sit on our laurels and wait for the Germans and Russians to swallow us whole!"
"Honey, calm down. we're completely secure. We control a huge part of South America and we needn't over-stretch ourselves past our army's capacity. We'll have to man South America with at least 4 divisions anyways."
Lady Benevolenzola spun around and pouted. She may be getting older, but she was still fiery.
King Righello came up to her, kissed her softly in the curve of her neck and wrapped his arms around her waist. "Besides, we've still got an heir to worry about," he said with a smile.