Endgame

“ Angelo said.
"Both sides have come to absolute stalemate. But not, regrettably, the kind of stalemate that means cessation of activity. In a conflict to the death, stalemate simply means battle without victory; battle until neither side has a living man left to fight. ”

“ Interest, the interest of life and of death, of our national existence, of the fate of those, the vastly numerous, whom it closely concerned, the interest of the extending War, in fine, the hurrying troops, the transfigured scene, formed a cover for every sort of intensity, made tension itself in fact contagious—so that almost any tension would do, would serve for one's share. ”

“ Such disquietude is our almost normal experience as finite wanderers. The situation may be one of private toil or of public controversy, of practical struggle or of theoretical uncertainty; but in any such case, amid the endless variety of our lives, the conflict retains essentially and profoundly similar features, — purpose at war with fortune, idea with datum, meaning with chaos, — such is the life of our narrow flickering moments, and in so far as we are indeed finite, in so far as our will wins not yet its whole battle, our intellect grasps not the truth that it seeks. ”

“ Meanwhile, before the eyes of a waiting, wondering world historic fate was shuffling the cards as neither war nor misrule had shifted them for many a day. Knave and king, spade and club, were now up, now down. Every one was in a new place. ”

“ Shall one battle determine the fate of empire, or a dozen?—the loss of one thousand men, or twenty thousand? or one hundred million or five hundred million dollars? In a year's Peace—in ten years, at most, of peaceful progress—we can restore them all. ”

“ As with a heavy curtain, the War has separated the old life from the new. Whenever and however it end, it is certain that the old order of things has come to an end, and that a new order is coming in. ”

“ How is it that we have been allowed to indulge in expectation of an approaching completion of success, only to behold the utter disappointment of our wishes? Why has a system of advance suddenly and inevitably been converted into a system of retreat? ”

“ How many have come upon and departed from the stage of life! How many plans, intentions and resolutions have been formed and either failed or succeeded! How many governments have toppled to the earth, and followed by "those that in their turn shall follow them." What a harvest it has been for Death! ”

“ When we reflect on this, and contrast these thirty-seven years with the period that preceded them, a period of violence, of tumult, of unrestingly destructive energy,--a period throughout which the wealth of nations was scattered like sand, and the blood of nations lavished like water,--it is impossible not to look with deep interest on the final crisis of that dark and dreadful epoch; the crisis out of which our own happier cycle of years has been evolved. ”

“ In short, I am like a general who has lost a battle, and who, having retired to his tent, in the midst of a field strewn with the dead and the dying marks out, too late, a strategic plan which would have infallibly gained him the victory! ”

“ But the way of thinking which regards war as a game of chance, where the stakes are temporal gain or loss, and which fixes the amount to be staked on the cards even before it begins the game—such a way of thinking is defeated even by a whim. ”

“ And meeting them in fight unswervable,
Drag down the earth, ourselves, and these our foes,
One sacrifice unto the gods of Chaos?
Why should we stay, and live the tragedy
Of power that survives its use? ”

“ But always there was the driving effort on each side to break the stalemate, to develop a parry for every possible thrust, to develop a thrust that could not be parried in time—something that would make war possible again. ”

“ War and pestilence will lay waste nine-and-ninety countries, and nine-and-ninety kingdoms will vanish and rise again. The last battle will last nine-and-ninety hours, and will be so bloody that all the victors will be able to find room in the shade of one birch-tree. ”

“ So also in the domain of history we are attracted by epochs at which the elemental forces, whose joint action or tempered antagonism has produced states and kingdoms, rise in sudden war against each other, and amidst the surging sea of troubles upheave into the light new formations, which give to subsequent ages their special character. ”

“ Then you will not live long—ten years, at a venture. They will be crowded with great events: wars, conquests, triumphs! Your fortune will increase to the end. You will sit upon a throne. But the end—ah! ”

“ There is always room—is there not?—for such a personal narrative as may recall to us the main outlines, and the chief determining factors of a war in which—often—everything seems to us in flux, and our eyes, amid the tumult of the stream, are apt to lose sight of the landmarks on its bank, and the signs of the approaching goal. ”

“ A great crisis is at hand, and we want you to meet it consciously in your life there, knowing its nature, so that we can have your help, not only in withstanding material onslaughts, like Germany’s invasions and brutality, but in things of the spirit—the real things, the eternal things—so that together we may win a real victory. ”

“ Shall we think that our prayers can avert a doom woven with the skein of events? To change a particle of our fate, might change the destiny of millions! Shall the link forsake the chain, and yet the chain be unbroken? ”

“ Therefore if we should go out against the enemy, our cause will hang in the balance, and we shall be taking a risk which will decide everything in a brief space of time; and, as regards the consequences of such action, we shall either fall down and worship Fortune or reproach her altogether. For those things whose issue is most quickly decided, fall, as a rule, under the sway of fortune. ”

“ Perhaps you will tell us in what way you consider the War can be ended before the world comes to economic ruin. Must we wait until you have had your fill of fighting or have destroyed the High Sea Fleet? ”

“ Imagine it—I had contracts with countless members of The Lords—and the war came. Then I was sent to the front by The Sphere—and here I am, every day costing me dear, rotting away in this horrible place. The time I have wasted here has already cost me a fortune. ”

“ Every one was now convinced that our affairs had approached an important crisis, and that an attempt to arrest the torrent, must instantly be made, or the heights, and with them the victory, yielded to the enemy. ”

“ I early learned to fight for the present—against both the past and the future—learned to seize what I could, lest it be seized either by hands reaching backward or by hands reaching forward. Literally, I opened my eyes upon life's insatiate competition and I began to practise at home the game of the world. ”

“ That was why I was asking you to promise me to—in short, to keep your own promise. There's going to be war next spring. The dreams of this strange new man Lincoln, out in the West, are going to come true—there will be catastrophies here. That is why I am here. War, one of the great games, is something that one must sometimes cross the globe to play. ”

“ Those terrific conflicts of the past seem strangely fascinating when looked at in their crucial throes ere yet they are stamped with the die of destiny. The thoughtful mind asks, “Would our world of today be just what it is if all or if any one of these battles had borne results the reverse of what they did bear?” ”

“ And the millions of ghastly slain beneath the sod,
And the graves of nations thy savage hands have made,
And the tomb of friendship, and hope by thee betrayed!
What is the fate of nations, man’s calamity, to thee?
From vague dread and uncertainty none, none is free.
Thy mandates mar all life, driving man’s joys away;
The shadow of thy wing appals the fairest day.
CHAPTER XIX.—THE FATE OF TIME.
Inexorable and insatiate Time! ”

“ To take plunder and to gather spoil, to bring back thy hand against the ruins that are inhabited again, and against a people gathered out of the nations, carrying on trade and commerce, who dwell on the navel of the earth. ”

“ And I shall be beaten in consequence, because my most implacable enemy, though only a few months further away from bankruptcy than myself, has not a ray of intelligence, and will go on fighting until civilization is destroyed, unless I, out of sheer pity for the world, condescend to capitulate. ”

“ But what does concern us most directly, and what makes this war the culmination of the long story which we have endeavoured to survey, is that this is a war in which, as in no earlier war, the whole fate and future of the now unified world is at stake. ”

“ Let us hail, then, as an echo from heaven, as the foretaste of a more blessed economy, these brief moments of perfect harmony, these halts between two storms. Peace is not in itself a dream, but we know it only as the result of a momentary equilibrium—an accident. ”

“ Long before the close of the twentieth century, standing armies will disappear; war will be at an end; the angel of peace will spread her white wings over all the nations of the earth! This Crusade, is the beginning of the end! ”

“ Nor can those motions that bring death prevail Forever, nor eternally entomb The welfare of the world; nor, further, can Those motions that give birth to things and growth Keep them forever when created there. Thus the long war, from everlasting waged, With equal strife among the elements Goes on and on. ”

“ But at the conclusion of a ten years war, how are we recompensed for the death of multitudes and the expence of millions, but by contemplating the sudden glories of paymasters and agents, contractors and commissaries, whose equipages shine like meteors, and whose palaces rise like exhalations. ”

“ The hour destined to mark the triumphant conclusion of the second stage in their historic, divinely conferred, world-encircling mission has not yet struck. Rumblings, loud and persistent, presaging a crisis of extreme severity in world affairs, confront them with a challenge which, in spite of what they have already accomplished, they cannot and must not either ignore or underrate. ”

“ We are going to fight for the future; we are going to die in order that our grandchildren may not have to endure a similar calamity. If the enemy triumphs, the war-habit will triumph, and conquest will be the only means of growth. ”

“ Through a thousand channels utterances have already reached the conference pleading that a long continuance of the struggle will mean ruin for all, but as both sides believe that only complete victory can decide the issue, [244] ever new sacrifices of blood and treasure are made, exhausting the present and impoverishing the future. ”

“ To this in part we owe the dimness of vision which overtook us as we went whirling together towards the great catastrophe. It is only in the glare of a world-conflagration that we begin to perceive, in something like their true proportions, the great forces and events which have been shaping our destinies. ”

“ And it is alternately born from fire and again resolved into fire in fixed cycles to all eternity, and this is determined by destiny. Of the opposites that which tends to birth or creation is called war and strife, and that which tends to destruction by fire is called concord and peace. ”

“ But, suppose the cause the justest in the world, the event the most prosperous, yet take into the account all the damages of war, of every kind and degree, and weigh them in the balance with all the advantages of victory, and you will find the most brilliant success not worth the trouble. ”

“ If we are seeking a like and larger, bloodless and better, conquest, we can properly pass to our quarters over the same path. It may be ominous of a bloody retreat under the uprisings and assaults of reigning superstition, but it will only thus be prophetic of ultimate and perfect victory. ”

“ Afterward one didn't know what one was doing—even the killing part of the business—until one reached the objective and lay down and had time to think and to count the dead about... Now the excitement has gone out of it, and the war looks as though it would go on forever. ”

“ Yet on the transactions of those few minutes the fate of empires may hang, and on the single word of command, rapidly spoken amidst the roar of cannon and the crash of arms, the destinies of the human race be affected. ”

“ This is a game like real war, played against time, and played under circumstances of considerable excitement, and it is remarkable how elastic the measurements of quite honest and honourable men can become. ”

“ And thus we shall evoke, not an isolated power waging dubious war against fearful odds, but a CONFEDERATE force, equal, we will hope, to the crisis;—a crisis such as, no one is so obtuse as not to see, demands something vastly in advance of the elements at present available for neutralizing the fearful evils now festering at our core, or looming in the no distant horizon. ”

“ And whatever difficulty there may be in tracing through past history the remoter connections of event and cause, one chain of sequence is always clear: the formation, namely, of the character of nations by their employments, and the determination of their final fate by their character. The moment and the first direction of circumstances, of decisive revolutions, often depend on accident; but their persistent course, and their consequences, depend wholly on the nature of the people. ”

“ Lost in an incomprehensibly complex network of intrigue and betrayal, the great leaders fell, or pulled out of the mess and made hasty peace with Terra. War and anarchy flamed between the stars—but limited war, a petty struggle really. ”