As Lord Canning sat quietly listening to the Home Secretary's counterproposals, he suddenly saw a civil servant from the Foreign Office signalling to him from the balcony. With Lord Grenville in full flow, Canning quietly slipped out of the chamber and into the lobby. The secretary hurried down the staircase and handed the Foreign Secretary a note, whispering a few words into his ear.
By the time Lord Canning returned to the Chamber, Lord Grenville had just finished his speech and was resuming his seat. Tentatively, Canning stood and waited to be acknowleged by the Speaker, indicating with his expression that he had something important to say. With no-one else requesting to speak, the Speaker reluctantly waved him on.
"My Lords, I wish to present some new information. Within the last few minutes, Her Majesty's Foreign Office received the following message on the diplomatic channels from the Junker Congress themselves, addressed to Her Majesty's Privateering Corps courtesy of Sir Andrew Stuart. The message reads as follows:
Lord Canning reads the note... Wrote:Upcoming operations within the Junkers Congress means that there will be increaced activity against the Hogosha of Kusari. This may well lead to Congress ships of all kinds becoming frequently spotted within Kusari space by your Privateers.
We wish to make it compleatly clear that we are not engaging in the trade of goods or infomation within Kusari and that we are in no way going against the will of your employers, the BAF. We say this as we wish there to be no misunderstanding between your men and our Transports, that may well be hauling away goods freshly stolen from a Kusari Container Transport.
As you can see, this further serves to confirm my earlier point that we are in a strong bargaining position with the Junker Congress in relation to their opposition to Kusari. Using this diplomatic leverage, we should be able to pursuade them to abandon their aid to corsairs in Bretonia without the need to resort to violence."
Sir Stanley Nelson <span style="color:#000066">Charles Canning </span><span style="color:#000066"> Foreign Secretary</span>