Westerling

“ Westerling had the baffled consciousness of fencing with a culprit at the bar who had turned adversary. It was the visionary's white logic of the blue dome against the soldier's material logic of x equals initial velocity. Here was an incomprehensible mortal who loved life and yet was ready to die for love of life. Here was love of country that refused to serve country.
All a pose, a clever bit of acting to play on his feelings through the presence of a woman, Westerling concluded. And Marta was still looking at the landscape. Her mind seemed withdrawn from the veranda. Only her body remained. ”

“ Westerling drew a deep breath that seemed to expand his whole being with greater appreciation of her. Yet that harried hunger, the hunger of a beast, was still in his glance.
"This is like you—like what I want you to be!" he said. "You are right." He caught her hand, enclosing it entirely in his grip, and she was sensible, in a kind of dazed horror, of the thrill of his strength. "Nothing can stop us! Numbers will win! Hard fighting in the mercy of a quick end!" he declared with his old rigidity of five against three which was welcome to her. ”

“ Westerling shot back. "For great gains there must be great risks."
"We prepare for the movement, Your Excellency," answered Turcas.
It was a steel harness of his own will that Westerling wore, without admitting that it galled him, and he laid it off only in Marta's presence. With her, his growing sense of isolation had the relief of companionship. She became a kind of mirror of his egoism and ambitions. He liked to have her think of him as a great man unruffled among weaker men. ”

“ When Bouchard, the chief of intelligence, who fought the battle of wits and spies against Lanstron, came, two hours before Westerling was due, the last of the staff except Westerling and his personal aide had arrived Bouchard, with his iron-gray hair, bushy eyebrows, strong, aquiline nose, and hawk-like eyes, his mouth hidden by a bristly mustache, was lean and saturnine, and he was loyal. No jealous thought entered his mind at having to serve a man younger than himself. ”

“ No soldiers ever fought better—in invasion, at least. Look at our losses! Spirit! Westerling drives us in. He thinks we can climb Niagara Falls! He—"
"Stop! You're talking like an anarchist!" snapped the colonel. "How can the men have spirit when you feel that way?"
"I shall continue to obey orders and do my duty, sir!" replied Fracasse. "And they will, too, or I'll know the reason why."
There was a silence, but at length the colonel exploded:
"I suppose Westerling knows what he is doing!"
"Still, we must go on! We must win!"
"Yes, the offensive always wins in the end. We must go on!" ”

“ That is terrific, Westerling!" the premier was saying.
"Only two hundred thousand of those are dead!" replied Westerling. "Many with only slight wounds are already returning to the front. Terrific, do you say? Two hundred thousand in five millions is one man out of every twenty-five. That wouldn't have worried Frederick the Great or Napoleon much. Eight hundred thousand is one out of six. The trouble is that such vast armies have never been engaged before. You must consider the percentages, not the totals." ”

“ Westerling explained. "However, I mean to make my headquarters at La Tir, immediately we have taken it, for the effect of having the leader of the army promptly established on conquered territory."
"I understand that," replied the premier. "But still you stake your life? That is the greatest thing a man has to stake. You stake your life on victory?" ”

“ Westerling staggered to his feet and with lurching steps went into the closet. There he sank down on the chair in a heap, staring at the telephone mouthpiece. Again the bell rang. Clenching his hands in a rocking effort, he was able to stiffen his spine once more as he took down the receiver. To admit defeat to the premier—no, he was not ready for that yet.
"The truth is out!" said the premier without any break in his voice and with the fatalism of one who never allows himself to blink a fact. "Telegraphers at the front who got out of touch with the staff were still in touch with the capital. ”

“ Confidence is the edge on the sword; confidence brings the final charge that wins the redoubt. Confidence was reflected in Westerling's bearing and in his smile of command as he passed through the staff rooms, Turcas and Bouchard in his train, with tacit approval of the arrangements. Finally, Turcas, now vice-chief of staff, and the other chiefs awaited his pleasure in the library, which was to be his sanctum. On the massive seventeenth-century desk lay a number of reports and suggestions. Westerling ran through them with accustomed swiftness of sifting and then turned to his personal aide. ”

“ We shall have the orders issued at the proper moment," concluded Partow. "And Westerling is going to find," he proceeded after a thoughtful pause, "that a man is readier to die fighting to hold his own threshold than fighting to take another man's. War is not yet solely an affair of machinery and numbers. The human element is still uppermost. I know something, perhaps, that Westerling does not know. I have had an experience that he has not had and that few active officers of either army have had—I have been under fire." ”

“ Appraising the qualities of the Marta of the moment in contrast with the Marta of seventeen and the Marta of three weeks ago, Westerling was significantly conscious of her attitude of impartiality, free of any attempt at feminine influence, and of her evident desire to help him with the facts that she knew.
"The charge of assault is only incidental," said Westerling. "But Mallin was in the right about his comrades entering the house; right about the destruction of property. It is our business to protect property, not only as a principle but as a matter of policy. ”

“ Turcas continued. "The orderly will show you the way."
Now Westerling grasped the fact that he was no longer chief of staff. He drew himself up in a desperate attempt at dignity; the staff saluted again, and, uncertainly, he followed the orderly, with the aide and valet still in loyal attendance.
Meanwhile, the aerial scouts of the Grays were puzzled by a moving cloud on the landscape several miles away. It filled the highway and overflowed into the fields, without military form: women and men of every age except the fighting age, marching together in a sinister militancy of purpose. ”

“ If reserves coming into action see men badly lacerated by shell fire it is bound to make them self-conscious and affect morale."
"Yes," Westerling agreed. "If moving pictures of the horrors of Port Arthur were to be shown in our barracks before a war, it would hardly encourage martial enthusiasm. I shall look this over and then have it issued. It will not be necessary to wait on action of the staff in council."
Turcas and Bouchard exchanged another glance. They had fresh evidence of Westerling's tendency to concentrate authority in himself. ”

“ Westerling did not mind being likened to the baron. It was a corroboration of her prophecy. The baron must have been a great leader of men in his time.
"The aeroplane will take its place as an auxiliary," he went on, his mind still running on the theme of her prophecy, which the meeting with Lanstron had quickened. "But war will, as ever, be won by the bayonet that takes and holds a position. We shall have no miracle victories, no—"
There he broke off. He did not accompany Mrs. Galland and Marta back to the house, but made his adieus at the garden-gate. ”

“ The immortals had small armies. Even the mustache and imperial had only three hundred thousand in the great battle of the last war. In this day of universal European conscription, if Westerling were to win it would be with five millions—five hundred thousand more than when he faced a young Brown officer over the wreck of an aeroplane—including the reserves; each man running, firing, crouching, as was the figure on the wall, and trying to give more of the white points that peppered the silhouette than he received. ”

“ He looked up to see his aide at his elbow saluting and François, his valet, standing by with an overcoat.
"We must go, Your Excellency," said the aide.
"Go?" asked Westerling dazedly.
"Yes, the staff has already gone to a new headquarters."
The announcement was the needle prick that once more aroused him to a sense of his situation. He rose and struck his fist on the desk in a pulsing outbreak of energy and stubbornness.
"But I stay! I stay!" he cried. "The enemy is not near. He can't be!"
"Very near, general. You can see for yourself, said the aide. ”

“ Westerling broke in. "The dead will be forgotten. The wounded will be proud of their wounds and their fathers and mothers triumphant when our army descends the other side of the range and starts on its march to the Browns' capital."
"But you have not yet taken a single fortress!" persisted the premier. "And the Browns report that they have lost only three hundred thousand men."
"Lanstron is lying!" retorted Westerling hotly. ”

“ To disturb one might make it unproductive.
"Then if I want to help the cause of peace I should help the Grays!"
The exclamation was more to herself than to him. He was silent. This girl in a veranda chair desiring to aid him and his five million bayonets and four thousand guns! Quixote and the windmills—but it was amazing; it was fine! The golden glow of the sunset was running in his veins in a paean of personal triumph. The profile turned ever so little. Now it was looking at the point where Dellarme had lain dying. Westerling noted the smile playing on the lips. ”

“ The Grays were winning; this alone counted in the present. They would continue to win; this alone counted in the future. They had won by crowding in reserves till the positions attacked yielded to superior strength. Thus they would continue to win until the last positions had yielded.
Five million mothers' sons against three million mothers' sons! Five to three pounds of flesh! Five to three ounces of blood! With equal skill, superior strength must always tell. Westerling and his staff were responsible for the skill. ”

“ Bouchard replied.
"Another thing, we may dismiss any idea that they are concealing either artillery or dirigibles or planes that we do not know of," continued Westerling. "That is a figment of our apprehensions. The fact that we find no truth in the rumors proves that there is none. Such things are too important to be concealed by one army from another."
"Lanstron certainly cannot carry them in his pockets," remarked Turcas. "Still, we must be sure," he added thoughtfully, more to himself than to Westerling, who had already turned his attention to a document which Turcas had laid on the desk. ”

“ The canopy of shrapnel smoke grew thicker; the infantry began to break.
"But, no!" said Westerling. "The place for a chief of staff is at his headquarters."
XLV THE RETREAT
Marta remained where Westerling had left her, rooted to the ground by the monstrous spell of the developing panorama of seemingly limitless movement. With each passing minute there must be a hundred acts of heroism which, if isolated in the glare of a day's news, would make the public thrill. ”

“ His life was an affair of calculated units of time; his habits of diet and exercise all regulated for the end of service. His subordinates, whose respect he held by the power of his intellect, said that his brain never tired and he had not enough body to tire. He was one of the wheels of the great army machine and loved the work for its own sake too well to be embittered at being overshadowed by a younger man. As a master of detail Westerling regarded him as an invaluable assistant, with certain limitations, which were those of the pigeonhole and the treadmill. ”

“ Men should be brave for their convictions," answered Hugo. "And, as you said, the men of our province are loyal to the old ideas. They believe they ought to fight the Browns."
Then followed a brief, intimate, appealing story of how each of his dead comrades had fallen.
"'You can read these to their folks at home, if you want to. They might like to know.'"
Irresistibly there crept into Westerling's face at these recitals of soldierly courage the satisfaction of the commander with the spirit of his men. Here was proof of the valor of the units of his army. ”

“ All the impulse of Westerling's military instinct and training, rebelling at an abstract ethical controversy with a private about book heresies that belonged under the censor's ban, called for the word of authority from the apex of the pyramid to put an end to talk with an atom at the base. But that profile—that serene ivory in the golden light, so unlike the Marta of the hotel reception-room—was compellingly present though her mind were absent. It suggested loss of temper as the supreme weakness. He had permitted a controversy. He must argue his man down ”

“ For no man can stand against them when they say no or yes."
"You know the keys to play on, though," remarked Westerling with a complimentary smile. "No one knows quite so well."
"I ought to," replied the premier. "That was the purpose of the semi-official communiqué about Bodlapoo, which, of course, we can repudiate later, if need be. I saw that the brilliant forced march of our commander had excited popular enthusiasm. It does not matter if he were in the wrong. Will race feeling rise to the pitch of war from this touchstone with the proper urging? ”