And then, as the last of the insects disappeared, and the headquarters staff came back from various places of refuge, Professor Snodgrass explained.
He had long wanted to do something to help the Allied cause, and thought perhaps it might be along the line of his studies of insects. Then the idea of wasps had come to him. He knew the vicious nature of the insects, and how fearlessly they would attack anything in their way. It was his idea that many thousands of the wasps might be propagated in artificial nests and loosed on the German armies preceding an attack by the Allies. The wasps would certainly cause disorder, if not 216 a rout, he thought, and so he had communicated his idea to his friend, the colonel.
That is, he had communicated the fact that he had the idea, but he had not disclosed the nature of the “new weapon,” as he called it in a note. Always willing to test anything new, the colonel had sent for the professor, inviting him to bring a model of the “new weapon” with him. The officer supposed the “weapon” might be a gun, projectile or powder.
“The idea was a good one in theory,” said Jerry, as he and his chums went back with the professor, who carried the now empty black box.
“And it worked out all right in practice,” declared Ned. “I never saw a quicker retreat.”
“The only thing that spoils it, as the colonel said,” added Bob, “is the inability of a wasp to distinguish between a friend and a foe. If they could be trained, now––”
“We’ll delegate that to you,” put in Ned.
“No, thanks! I’m stung badly enough as it is.”
And the professor, sadly shaking his head over the failure of his scheme, went back to work further on his plan of making moving pictures of insects hopping about under the stimulus of the noise of big guns.
But for many a day the story of the wasps at headquarters was told up and down the firing line. 217