Look Inside The Lost Empress - Jefferson Tayte Book 4

The 'look inside' feature on Amazon is now live for my new Jefferson Tayte genealogical mystery, The Lost Empress, which will be released in all formats worldwide on 21 October - unless you live in Australia, in which case you can get it a day early on the 20th. I'm getting more and more excited about it every day.
Below is an excerpt, which is from the preface to the book. This is the first time I've used a preface in my work, and I've done so now because when I came across the material during my research I felt it set the backdrop for the book very well.
The full sample, which includes the prologue and part of chapter one (where we catch up with Jefferson Tayte again) is viewable via this link.  Alternatively, you can access it via the 'look inside' feature on the Amazon store wherever you are.

On June 20, 1908, Anglo-French journalist and diplomat William Le Queux returned from his travels to Berlin with report of an alleged secret speech delivered by Kaiser Wilhelm II at a Council held at Potsdam Palace on June 2, 1908. Below is a transcript of an article as it was published in The Dominion, volume 8, issue 2558, on September 4, 1915.


The speech took over three hours to deliver, and for five hours afterwards was discussed. The report he brought home was placed before the meeting of the British Cabinet, and discussed. At first some little suspicion was cast upon it—had the speech ever been delivered? So further inquiry was made, and there was no doubt it was perfectly genuine. The gentleman who handed it to him (the lecturer) was a high official, very near to the Kaiser’s person, an official to whom we should all be very deeply grateful, for he had furnished us with much important information. He was friendly disposed towards England, and had no sympathy with the present war. If his name were revealed he would be arrested, and probably shot. In the course of the speech the Kaiser said: ‘We shall strike as soon as I have a sufficiently large fleet of Zeppelins at my disposal. I have given orders for the hurried construction of more airships of the Zeppelin type. When these are ready we shall destroy England’s North Sea Channel, and Atlantic fleets, after which nothing on earth can prevent the landing of our army on British soil and its triumphant march to London.’ He went on to say: ‘You will desire to know how the outbreak of hostilities will be brought about. I can assure you on this point. Certainly we shall not have to go far to find a cause for war. My army of spies scattered over Great Britain and France, as it is over North and South America, as well as all the other parts of the world, will take good care of that. I have issued already secret orders that will at the proper moment accomplish what we desire.’ The concluding sentence was: ‘With Great Britain and France in the dust, with Russia and the United States at my mercy, I shall set a new course to the destinies of the world, a course that will ensure to Germany for all time to come the leading Power among nations of the globe.’