United States or Benin ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Moved like the pawns on the checkerboard of life, they play their parts and are laid aside after the game is over.
A little of the talk has been public, but most of it has been private, through all sorts of channels. It has come to me in all sorts of guises, but never with the terms disclosed which the German Government would be willing to accept. That Government has other valuable pawns in its hands besides those I have mentioned.
It lit up with the weird light of the dying day the pallid, clean-shaven faces of gallant British boys, the rugged faces of the Scot, the olive skin of the child of Provence, the bronzed cheeks of old veterans: it threw its lurid glow on red coats and black coats, white facings and gilt epaulettes; it drew sparks as of still-living fire from breastplates and broken swords, discarded casques and bayonets, sabretaches and kilts and bugles and drums, and dead horses and arms and accoutrements and dead and dying men, all lying pell-mell in a huge litter with the glow of midsummer sunset upon them poor little chessmen pawns and knights castles of strength and kings of some lonely mourning hearts all swept together by the Almighty hand of the Great Master of this terrestrial game.
Captain Blaise filled them up again. "Men like myself, Rimmle, are but pawns in this trading game. It is the people on the inside, the Governor of Momba and gentlemen like you, who direct the play." Rimmle smacked his lips. "M-m To be sure, the Governor of Momba "
It's risky, Marston; it's thankless; it's without glory and without fame; nevertheless it's a fascinating game; the stakes are incalculable, the remuneration is the best." "You're quite right as to those high up in the service," Marston remarked, "the remuneration, I mean, but not as to us poor devils who are only the pawns.
"But if we return not from our adventure," ended Sir Mortimer, "if the sea claims us, and upon his sandy floor, amid his Armida gardens, the silver-singing mermaiden marvel at that wreckage which was once a tall ship and at those bones which once were animate, if strange islands know our resting-place, sunk for evermore in huge and most unkindly forests, if, being but pawns in a mighty game, we are lost or changed, happy, however, in that the white hand of our Queen hath touched us, giving thereby consecration to our else unworthiness, if we find no gold, nor take one ship of Spain, nor any city treasure-stored, if we suffer a myriad sort of sorrows and at the last we perish miserably "
He could not look back, but he knew instinctively that the prince had gone into the castle as silently as he had come from it. And he was alone at the wheel with Julie and Suzanne inside. In very truth chance or fortune had moved the pawns for him in a way that the most skillful player could not have equaled. For a moment, the whole world seemed to swim beneath his feet.
All these questions must be treated as matters for constructive statesmanship, not as pawns in party contests. They must be dealt with as practical problems having regard to the special circumstances of each case, not as opportunities for embodying some general political theory.
Again, the power of the woman we have loved first has wonderful reserves to draw upon, humble pawns of feelings, memories, associations, not so brilliant to the imagination as the royalties of romance and sentiment on the other side, but incalculably useful in a battle.
They are little to be envied, those poor pawns in the game of statecraft, moved hither and thither at the will of players who are themselves no better. The human nature of them is a negligible appendage to the names and rent-rolls that predetermine their place upon the board of worldly ambition, a board befouled by blood, by slobberings from the evil mouth of greed, and by infamy of every kind.
Word Of The Day