XIII
BREAKING A PAPER-KNIFE
Hedworth Westerling would have said twenty to one if he had been asked the odds against war when he was parting from Marta Galland in the hotel reception-room. Before he reached home he would have changed them to ten to one. A scare bulletin about the Bodlapoo affair compelling attention as his car halted to let the traffic of a cross street pass, he bought a newspaper thrust in at the car window that contained the answer of the government of the Browns to a despatch of the Grays about the dispute that had arisen in the distant African jungle. This he had already read two days previously, by courtesy of the premier. It was moderate in tone, as became a power that had three million soldiers against its opponent's five; nevertheless, it firmly pointed out that the territory of the Browns had been overtly invaded, on the pretext of securing a deserter who had escaped across the line, by Gray colonial troops who had raised the Gray flag in place of the Brown flag and remained defiantly in occupation of the outpost they had taken.
As yet, the Browns had not attempted to repel the aggressor by arms for fear of complications, but were relying on the Gray government to order a withdrawal of the Gray force and the repudiation of a commander who had been guilty of so grave an international affront. The surprising and illuminating thing to Westerling was the inspired statement to the press from the Gray Foreign Office, adroitly appealing to Gray chauvinism and justifying the "intrepidity" of the Gray commander in response to so-called "pin-pricking" exasperations.
At the door of his apartment, François, his valet and factotum, gave Westerling a letter.
"Important, sir," said François.
Westerling knew by a glance that it was, for it was addressed and marked "Personal" in the premier's own handwriting. A conference for ten that evening was requested in a manner that left no doubt of its urgency.
"Let me see, do I dine at the Countess Zalinski's to-night?" asked Westerling. Both François and his personal aide kept a list of his appointments.
"Not to-night, sir. To-night you—" said François.
"Good!" thought Westerling. "No excuses will be necessary to Marie in order to be at the premier's by ten."
Curiosity made him a little ahead of time, but he found the premier awaiting him in his study, free from interruption or eavesdropping.
In the shadow of the table lamp the old premier looked his years. His definite features were easy material for the caricaturist, who does not deal in halftones. A near view of them was not attractive. They had the largeness which impresses the gallery from the floor of a parliamentary chamber, where delicate lines of sensibility and character lack the quality which the actor supplies with his make-up. As is often the case with elderly statesmen, his face seemed like that of the crowd done boldly as a single face, while his shrewd eyes in a bed of crow's-feet, when they lighted to their purpose in confidence, expressed his understanding of the crowd and its thoughts and how it may be led.
From youth he had been in politics, ever a bold figure and a daring player, but now beginning to feel the pressure of younger men's elbows. Fonder even of power, which had become a habit, than in his twenties, he saw it slipping from his grasp at an age when the 'downfall of his government meant that he should never hold the reins again. He had been called an ambitious demagogue and a makeshift opportunist by his enemies, but the crowd liked him for his ready strategy, his genius for appealing phrases, and for the gambler's virtue which hitherto had made him a good loser.
"You saw our communiqué to-night that went with the publication of the Browns' despatch?" he remarked.
"Yes, and I was glad that I had been careful to send a spirited commander to that region," Westerling replied.
"So you guess my intention, I see." The premier smiled. He picked up a long, thin ivory paper-knife and softly patted the palm of his hand with it. "We have had many discussions, you and I, Westerling," he said. "But to-night I'm going to ask categorical questions. They may take us over old ground, but they are the questions of the nation to the army."
"Certainly!" Westerling replied in his ready, confident manner.
"We hear a great deal about the precision and power of modern arms as favoring the defensive," said the premier. "I have read somewhere that it will enable the Browns to hold us back, despite our advantage of numbers. Also, that they can completely man every part of their frontier and that their ability to move their reserves rapidly, thanks to modern facilities, makes a powerful flanking attack in surprise out of the question."
"Some half-truths in that," answered Westerling. "One axiom, that must hold good through all time, is that the aggressive which keeps at it always wins. We take the aggressive. In the space where Napoleon deployed a division, we deploy a battalion to-day. The precision and power of modern arms require this. With such immense forces and present-day tactics, the line of battle will practically cover the length of the frontier. Along their range the Browns have a series of fortresses commanding natural openings for our attack. These are almost impregnable. But there are pregnable points between them. Here, our method will be the same that the Japanese followed and that they learned from European armies. We shall concentrate in masses and throw in wave after wave of attack until we have gained the positions we desire. Once we have a tenable foothold on the crest of the range the Brown army must fall back and the rest will be a matter of skilful pursuit."
The premier, as he listened, rolled the paper-knife over and over, regarding its polished sides, which were like Westerling's manner of facile statement of a programme certain of fulfilment.
"We can win, then? We can go to their capital, or far enough to force a great indemnity, the annexation of one of their provinces, perhaps, and the taking over of their African colonies, which we can develop so much better than they?"
Westerling took care to show none of the eagerness which had set his pulses humming.
"To their capital!" he declared decisively. "Nothing less. For that I have planned."
"And the cost in lives?"
"Five or six hundred thousand casualties, which means about a hundred thousand killed."
"Ghastly! The population of a good-sized city!" exclaimed the premier.
"A small percentage out of five million soldiers; a smaller out of eighty million population," Westerling returned.
"And how long do you think the war would last? How long the strain on our finances, the suspense to the markets?"
"About a month. We shall go swiftly. The completeness of modern preparation must make a war of to-day brief between two great powers. We must win with a rush, giving the defenders no breathing spell, pouring masses after masses upon the critical positions."
"How long will it take to mobilize?"
"Less than a week after the railroads are put entirely at our service, with three preceding days of scattered movements," answered Westerling. "Deliberate mobilizations are all right for a diplomatic threat that creates a furore in the newspapers and a depression in the stock-market, but which is not to be carried out. When you mean war, all speed and the war fever at white heat."
"Therefore, there would be little time for the public to hoard money or to provoke a panic. The government, knowing precisely what was before it, could take severe preventive measures."
"But I may say that we should strike before mobilization is complete. A day will be required to take the La Tir tangent and other outlying positions. The 128th and other regiments who will do this work are already at the front. They were chosen because they came from distant provinces and we can count on their patriotic fervor for brilliant and speedy action, with resulting general enthusiasm for the whole army, which will be up in time for the assault on the Browns' permanent defences."
"You would have made a good politician, Westerling," the premier remarked, with a twitching uplift of the brows and a knowing gleam in his shrewd old eyes.
"Thank you," replied Westerling, appearing flattered, though secretly annoyed that any one should think that a chief of staff could care to change places with any man in the world. Governments might come and go, but the army was the rock in the midst of the play of minor forces, the ultimate head of order and power. "A man who is able to lead in anything must be something of a politician," he said suavely.
"Very true, indeed. Perhaps I had that partly in mind in making you vice-chief of staff," responded the premier enjoyably. "You spoke of the war fever at white heat," he went on, returning to his muttons, "and of the army's enthusiasm for its work. There we come to the kernel in the nut, eh?" he asked, as he prodded the paper-knife into the palm of his hand.
"Drill, organization, discipline, and centralized authority and a high-spirited aristocracy of officers are most important," said Westerling. "But after that come morale and the psychology of the soldier." There he shrugged slightly, in indication of a resentment at the handicap of human nature in his work. "The business of a soldier is to risk death in the way he is told. The keener he is for his cause the better. An ideal soldier is he who does not think for himself, but observes every detail of training and will not stop until halted by orders or a bullet. Therefore we want the army hot with desire. The officers of a company cannot force their men forward. Without insubordination or mutiny the men may stop from lack of interest after only a very small percentage of loss."
"Lack of interest!" mused the premier. But Westerling, preoccupied with the literal exposition of his subject, did not catch the flash of passing satire before the premier, his features growing hard and challenging, spoke in another strain: "Then it all goes back to the public—to that enormous body of humanity out there!" He swung the paper-knife around with outstretched arm toward the walls of the room. "To public opinion—as does everything else in this age—to the people! I have seen them pressing close, about to remove me from power, and I have started a diversion which made them forget the object of their displeasure. I have thought them won one day, and the next I realized that they were going against me. Thank Heaven for the brevity of their memory, or we leaders would be hung high by our own inconsistencies! He who leads sees which way they will go, rushes to the head of the procession, discovers them to themselves and turns a corner and they follow, thinking that they are going straight to the point. But always they are there, never older, never younger, never tiring—there, smiling or scowling or forgetting all about you, only to have a sudden fierce reminder overnight to surprise you—and our masters, yours and mine! 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? Of course, the impulse must come from the people themselves. We must seem to resist it, the better to arouse it." He bent the paper-knife into a bow with fingers that were rigid. "Times are hard, factions are bitter, our cabinet is in danger, with economic and political chaos from overpopulation in sight," he continued. "We hunger for land, for fresh opportunities for development. An outburst of patriotism, concentrating every thought of the nation on war!—is that the way out?"
Westerling had only answered questions so far. Here was his cue for argument.
"We were never so ready," he said. "War must come some time. We should choose the moment, not leave it to chance. The nation needs war as a stimulant, as a corrective, as a physician. We grow stale; we think of our domestic troubles. The old racial passions are weakening and with them our virility. Victory will make room for millions in the place of the thousands who fall. The indemnity will bring prosperity. Because we have had no war, because the long peace has been abnormal, is the reason you have all this agitation and all these strikes. They will be at an end. Those who are fit to rule will be in power."
"And you are sure—sure we can win?" the premier asked with a long, tense look at Westerling, who was steady under the scrutiny.
"Absolutely!" he answered. "Five millions against three! It's mathematics, or our courage and skill are not equal to theirs Absolutely! We have the power, why not use it? We do not live in a dream age!"
The premier sank deeper in his chair. He was silent, thinking. He who had carried off so many great coups with rare ease was on the threshold of one that made them all seem petty. He had heard random talk that some of the officers of the staff considered Westerling to be lath painted to look like steel. 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. He had the ability to achieve a position; he had been the lath painted to look like steel. He had all the externals which the layman associates with victory until he went to the supreme test, which ripped him into slivers of rotten wood. The little Napoleon had been one of the premier's favorite bugaboo examples of stage realism tried out in real life. But it was ridiculous to compare him with the stalwart figure sitting across the table, who had spoken the language of materialism without illusion.
Westerling's ambition on edge communicated itself to the premier, whose soft hands, long since divorced from any labor except official hand-shaking and the exercise of authority, were bending the paper-knife with unconscious vigor.
"All the achievements of power form only a dull background for victory in war to a people's imagination!" he exclaimed. "Your name and mine to symbolize an age! What power for us! What power for the nation!"
From a sudden, unwitting exertion of his strength the knife which had been the recipient of his emotions snapped in two. Rather carefully he laid the pieces on the table before he rose and turned to Westerling, his decision made.
"If the people respond with the war fever, then it is war!" he said. "I take you at your word that you will win!"
Westerling's chair creaked with the tense drawing of his muscles in the impulse of delight. He had gained the great purpose; but there was another and vital one on his programme.
"A condition!" he announced. "From the moment war begins the army is master of all intelligence, all communication, all resources. Everything we require goes into the crucible!"
"And the press—the mischievous, greedy, but very useful press?" asked the premier.
"It also shall serve; also obey. No lists of killed and wounded shall be given out until I am ready. The public must know nothing except what I choose to tell. I act for the people and the nation."
"That is agreed," said the premier. "For these terrible weeks every nerve and muscle of the nation is at your service to win for the nation. In three or four days I shall know if the public rises to the call. If not—" He shook his head.
"While all the information given out is provocative to our people, you will declare your hope that war may be averted," Westerling continued. "This will screen our purpose. Finally, on top of public enthusiasm will come the word that the Browns have fired the first shot—as they must when we cross the frontier—that they have been killing our soldiers. This will make the racial spirit of every man respond. Having decided for war, every plan is worthy that helps to victory."
"It seems fiendish!" exclaimed the premier in answer to a thought eddying in the powerful current of his brain. "Fiendish with calculation, but merciful, as you say."
"A fast, terrific campaign! A ready machine taking the road!" Westerling declared. "Less suffering than if we went to war carelessly for a long campaign—than if we allowed sentiment to interfere with intellect."
"I like your energy, your will!" said the premier admiringly. "And about the declaration of war? We shall time that to your purpose."
"Declarations of war before striking, by nations taking the aggressive, are a disadvantage," Westerling explained. "They are going out of practice. Witness the examples of Japan against Russia and the Balkan allies against Turkey. In these days declarations are not necessary as a warning of what is going to happen. They belong to the etiquette of fencers."
"Yes, exactly. The declaration of war and the ambassador's passports will be prepared and the wire that fighting has begun will release them," agreed the premier. "Another thing," he added, "there is the question of the opinion of the world as represented by The Hague and the peace societies. This government has always expressed sympathy with their ideas."
"Naturally," Westerling put in. "We shall use hand-grenades, explosives from dirigibles, every known power of destruction. So will the Browns, you may be sure. In such a cataclysm we shall have no time for niceties. The peace societies will have hardly formulated their protests to The Hague before the war is over. Our answer will be our victory—the power that goes with the prestige of unconquerable force. Victory, nothing but victory counts!"
Westerling was speaking by the book, expressing the ideas that he had again and again rehearsed as a part of the preparation, the eternal preparation for the sudden emergency of war, which is the duty of the staff. So letter-perfect was he in his lines that a layman might have scouted his realization of the enormousness of his responsibility.
"Yet if we did lose! If when I had given you all you ask your plans went wrong! If our army were broken to pieces on the frontier and then the nation, kept in ignorance of events, learned the truth"—the premier enunciated slowly and pointedly while he locked glances with Westerling—"that is the end for us both. You would hardly want to return to the capital to face public wrath!"
"We must win though we lose a million men!" he answered. "I stake my life!" he cried hoarsely, striking his fist on the table.
"You stake your life!" repeated the premier with slow emphasis.
"Bravado hardly becomes a chief of staff. His place is not under fire," 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?" he demanded fiercely.
"I do!" said Westerling. "Yes, my life. We cannot fail!"
"Then it will be war, if the people want it!" said the premier. "I shall not resist their desire!" he added in his official manner, at peace with his conscience.