Palmerston shook his head. “We always have enemies. Great powers cannot escape them. We have enemies of the past, enemies of the present, and enemies of the future. Think upon it, who might they be?”

While Russell pondered, Palmerston stood and walked to the window. For once it wasn't raining, although the late afternoon was bleak. The dark clouds created by the smoke from a hundred thousand coal-burning furnaces blanketed nearby London in filth.

“France is not our enemy of the moment,” Palmerston said, answering his own question, “although she would like to be. France is a nation of incompetents led by a buffoon, Napoleon III. No, France is not a threat. At least not right now. That she was in the past and will be in the future is both history and inevitability, but France does not threaten us today.”

Gladstone decided to join in. “Then what about Russia? Granted we pulled the bear's claws in the Crimea, but she is still vast and populous.”

“And filled with unarmed and illiterate millions,” Palmerston said. “She is even less competent than France. The only reason we had any difficulty fighting Russia in the Crimea was that we had to fight them on their home ground. No, Russia is not our enemy.”

“Prussia?” asked Russell.

“A good thought,” Palmerston said. “The Prussians are likely to succeed in organizing the German states into one nation, which would make them very powerful. But that will take many years to accomplish. They are a definite candidate for an enemy of the future, but not of the present.”

Russell shrugged. “Then who's left? Surely you cannot be thinking of Portugal or Spain? And both Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire are sick and likely to fall apart before very long. Nor can you be thinking of Italy, which, like Prussia, may someday be unified. I must also admit that I find it difficult to consider a unified Italy a threat to anyone.”

“True enough,” said Palmerston. “Now, who does that leave us?” Russell smiled thinly. “The United States of America.”