“But an English officer?” Monsieur Guillot remarked dubiously. “I do not quite understand, then. The nature of the communication which I have come to receive is known to you?”
Granet nodded and accepted the chair which his host had offered.
“I do not think that you should be so much surprised,” he said simply. “If the war is grievous for your country, it is ruin to mine. We do not, perhaps, advertise our apprehensions in the papers. We prefer to keep them locked up in our own brain. There is one great fact always before us. Germany is unconquerable. One must find peace or perish.”
Monsieur Guillot listened with a curious look upon his face. His forefinger tapped the copy of the Times which was lying upon the table. The other nodded gravely.
“Yes,” he continued, “I know that our Press is carrying on a magnificent campaign of bluff. I know that many of the ignorant people of the country believe that this war is still being prosecuted with every hope of success. We who have been to the Front, especially those who have any source of information in Germany, know differently. The longer the war, the more ruinous the burden which your country and mine will have to bear.”
“It is my opinion also,” Monsieur Guillot declared, “and furthermore, listen. It is not our war at all, that is the cruel part of it. It is Russia’s war and yours. Yet it is we who suffer most, we, the richest part of whose country is in the hands of the foe, we whose industries are paralysed, my country from whom the life-blood is being slowly drained. You English, what do you know of the war? No enemy has set foot upon your soil, no Englishman has seen his womankind dishonoured or his home crumble into ashes. The war to you is a thing of paper, an abstraction—that same war which has turned the better half of my beloved country into a lurid corner of hell.”
“Our time has not yet come,” Granet admitted, “but before long, unless diplomacy can avert it, fate will be knocking at our doors, too. Listen. You have friends still in power, Monsieur Guillot?—friends in the Cabinet, is it not so?”
“It is indeed true,” Monsieur Guillot assented.
“You have, too,” Granet continued, “a great following throughout France. You are the man for the task I bring to you. You, if you choose, shall save your country and earn the reward she will surely bestow upon you.”
Monsieur Guillot’s cheeks were flushed a little. With long, nervous fingers he rolled a cigarette and lit it.