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Updated: June 12, 2025
"The police simply watch it go by. Soldiers ready to lay down their lives to hold the range give it Godspeed when they learn what it wants. Both are citizens before they are soldiers or policemen. The thing is as elemental as an earthquake or a tidal wave." "Public opinion! Unanimous public opinion! Nothing can stop that!" exclaimed Turcas in dry fatalism.
Now Turcas, the assistant vice-chief of staff, and Bouchard, chief of the division of intelligence, standing on either side of Westerling's desk, awaited his decisions on certain matters which they had brought to his attention. Both were older than Westerling, Turcas by ten and Bouchard by fifteen years.
"They certainly don't learn our plans with their planes and dirigibles!" he declared energetically. "Hardly, when we never see them over our lines." "The Browns are acting on the defensive in the air as well as on the earth!" "But our own planes and dirigibles bring little news," said Turcas. "I mean, those that return," he added pungently. "And few do return.
Stunned by the losses and repulses, loyally industrious, their opinions unasked, they listened to his whirlwind of orders without comment all except Turcas. "If they are apprised of our plan and are able to concentrate more artillery than our guns can silence, the losses will be demoralizing," he observed. Westerling threw up his head, frowning down the objection.
To Westerling they seemed like a procession of ghosts. The features of one were the features of all, graven with the weariness of the machine's treadmill. Their harness held them up. A moving platform under their feet kept their legs moving. They grouped around the great man's desk silently, Turcas, his lips a half-opened seam, his voice that of crinkling parchment, acting as spokesman.
"The trouble is we are not informed!" exclaimed Turcas, opening his thin lips even less than usual, but twisting them in a significant manner as he gave his words a rasping emphasis. The others hastened to follow his lead with equal candor. "Exactly. We have no reports of their artillery strength, which we had greatly underestimated," said the chief of artillery.
There was a reported remark by Turcas, his assistant, implying that the ability to achieve a position did not mean the ability to fill it. Jealousy, no doubt; the jealousy of rivals! The premier himself was used to having members of his own cabinet ever on the watch for the vulnerable spot in his back, which he had never allowed them to find. Yet, there was the case of Louis Napoleon.
Very cosey and pleasant, yes, the company of a prophetess, with a ray of sunlight making her hair an aurora of flashing bronze overtopping a brown face, the eyes holding answers to an increasing number of unasked questions about the new forces that he had found in her. "Why, yes," she agreed with evident pleasure, for she was thinking of Hugo. Turcas now came, in answer to Westerling's ring.
"The man you seek is dead!" said Turcas, stepping in front of the crowd, his features unrelenting in authority. "Now, go back to your work and leave us to ours." "I understand, sir," said the veteran. "We've no argument with you." "Yes!" agreed the market woman. "But if you ever leave this range alive we shall have one. So, you stay!"
One by one, almost perfunctorily, Westerling gave his assent as he passed the papers to Turcas; while Turcas's dry voice, coming from between a narrow opening of the thin lips, gave his reasons with a rapid-firer's precision in answer to his chief's inquiries. With each order somewhere along that frontier some unit of a great organism would respond.
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