Part 82 (1/2)
”Yes, sir. But the staff were up all last night and most of to-night, not to mention a pretty busy day. When they had finished their report to you, sir, they were utterly done up. Yes, the orders not to disturb them are quite positive, and as a junior I could not do so except by their orders as superiors. The chief, before retiring, however, repeated to me, in case any inquiry came from you, sir, that there was nothing he could add to the staff's message to the nation and the army. It is to be given to the soldiers the first thing in the morning, and he will let you know how they regard it.”
”Confound these machine minds that spring their surprises as fully executed plans!” exclaimed the premier.
”It's true--Par tow and the staff have covered everything--met every argument. There is nothing more for them to say,” said the foreign minister.
”But what about the indemnity?” demanded the finance minister. He was thinking of victory in the form of piles of gold in the treasury.
This question, too, was answered.
”War has never brought prosperity,” Partow had written. ”Its purpose is to destroy, and destruction can never be construction. The conclusion of a war has often a.s.sured a period of peace; and peace gave the impetus of prosperity attributed to war. A man is strong in what he achieves, not through the gifts he receives or the goods he steals. Indemnity will not raise another blade of wheat in our land. To take it from a beaten man will foster in him the desire to beat his adversary in turn and recover the amount and more. Then we shall have the apprehension of war always in the air, and soon another war and more destruction. Remove the danger of a European cataclysm, and any sum extorted from the Grays becomes paltry beside the wealth that peace will create. An indemnity makes the purpose of the courage of the Grays in their a.s.saults and of the Browns in their resistance that of the burglar and the looter. There is no money value to a human life when it is your own; and our soldiers gave their lives. Do not cheapen their service.”
”Considering the part that we played at The Hague,” observed the foreign minister, ”it would be rather inconsistent for us not to--”
”There is only one thing to do. Lanstron has got us!” replied the premier. ”We must jump in at the head of the procession and receive the mud or the bouquets, as it happens.”
With Partow's and the staff's appeals went an equally earnest one from the premier and his cabinet. Naturally, the noisy element of the cities was the first to find words. It shouted in rising anger that Lanstron had betrayed the nation. Army officers whom Partow had retired for leisurely habits said that he and Lanstron had struck at their own calling. But the average man and woman, in a daze from the shock of the appeals after a night's celebration, were reading and wondering and asking their neighbors' opinions. If not in Partow's then in the staff's message they found the mirror that set their own ethical professions staring at them.
Before they had made up their minds the correspondents at the front had set the wires singing to the evening editions; for Lanstron had directed that they be given the ran of the army's lines at daybreak. They told of soldiers awakening after the debauch of yesterday's fighting, normal and rested, glowing with the security of possession of the frontier and responding to their leaders' sentiment; of officers of the type favored by Partow who would bring the industry that commands respect to any calling, taking Lanstron's views as worthy of their profession; of that irrepressible poet laureate of the soldiers, Captain Stransky, I.C.
(iron cross), breaking forth in a new song to an old tune, expressing his brotherhood ideas in a ”We-have-ours-let-them-keep-theirs” chorus that was spreading from regiment to regiment.
This left the retired officers to grumble in their coiners that war was no longer a gentleman's vocation, and silenced the protests of their natural ally in the business of making war, the noisy element, which promptly adapted itself to a new fas.h.i.+on in the relation of nations.
Again the great square was packed and again a wave-like roar of cheers greeted the white speck of an eminent statesman's head. All the ideas that had been fomenting in the minds of a people for a generation became a living force of action to break through the precedents born of provincial pa.s.sion with a new precedent; for the power of public opinion can be as swift in its revolutions as decisive victories at arms. The world at large, after rubbing its forehead and readjusting its eye-gla.s.ses and clearing its throat, exclaimed:
”Why not? Isn't that what we have all been thinking and desiring? Only n.o.body knew how or where to begin.”
The premier of the Browns found himself talking over the long distance to the premier of the Grays in as neighborly a fas.h.i.+on as if they had adjoining estates and were arranging a matter of community interest.
”You have been so fine in waiving an indemnity,” said the premier of the Grays, ”that Turcas suggests we pay for all the damage done to property on your side by our invasion. I'm sure our people will rise to the suggestion. Their mood has overwhelmed every preconceived notion of mine. In place of the old suspicion that a Brown could do nothing except with a selfish motive is the desire to be as fair as the Browns. And the practical way the people look at it makes me think that it will be enduring.”
”I think so, for the same reason,” responded the premier of the Browns.
”They say it is good business. It means prosperity and progress for both countries.”
”After all, a soldier comes out the hero of the great peace movement,”
concluded the premier of the Grays. ”A soldier took the tricks with our own cards. Old Partow was the greatest statesman of us all.”
”No doubt of that!” agreed the premier of the Browns. ”It's a sentiment to which every premier of ours who ever tried to down him would have readily subscribed!”
The every-day statesman smiles when he sees the people smile and grows angry when they grow angry. Now and then appears an inscrutable genius who finds out what is brewing in their brains and brings it to a head.
He is the epoch maker. Such an one was that little Corsican, who gave a stagnant pool the storm it needed, until he became overfed and mistook his ambition for a continuation of his youthful prescience.
Marta had yet to bear the shock of Westerling's death. After learning the manner of it she went to her room, where she spent a haunted, sleepless night. The morning found her still tortured by her visualization of the picture of him, irresolute as the mob pressed around the Gray headquarters.
”It is as if I had murdered him!” she said. ”I let him make love to me--I let my hand remain in his once--but that was all, Lanny. I--I couldn't have borne any more. Yet that was enough--enough!”