In her effort to obey, expression failed the spirit-girl.
Glancing around at her, Satan frowned. “Nothing to say, as usual? You’ve not yet suspected, then, that the basic principle of Gehenna is militaristic? Where would any autocrat be without defense for his autocracy?”
“This army, of what race is it come?”
At the simplicity of her question, His Highness laughed. “Do you think for a moment that a one-race army would be enough for me? I may have been wrong since birth, but I’m right in the safety of numbers. The hosts below are conscripted from the best bad men since Cain—Europeans and Americans from Japheth; Arabs, Jews, et al., from Shem; Egyptians and Africans from Ham. Not chosen by God, but by me, and on the principle that in the heart of every man, be he white or black, red or yellow, is the incipient germ of fratricide. Might is right—a slogan of my coinage. Hell over all, say I!”
With face working and eyes blinded by their own flare, he applied shaking fingers to the speed buttons of the aeromobile.
“Truth is stronger than fiction,” he declared. “Down there you see a suggestion of the truth about me. But I need more man-made demons to demonstrate that truth. I must have more, more, and yet more.”
His intensity affected Dolores like the winds which had chilled her to the soul on her recent trudge through the Valley of Death.
“I depend upon the beast that is in every man, as shown by the way the most fanatic pacifist will fight when forced over the top. But how to gain recruits in bulk, now that the World War has failed!”
As they soared directly over the first encampment, he leaned to the mirror that reflected The Hawk’s revolving eyes and began to count in numerals strange to his guest the units in that section. Her brain, so recently finite, grew dizzy in the attempt to follow him.
Evidently he felt gratified by his computations. “Already a creditable army. Nobody but the Great-I-Am knows the trouble I’ve had recruiting them and He only because He has been kept so busy trying to block me. From the first, I’ve counted on wearing Him out—getting Him so tired that He’ll be willing to let Nature take its course. Looked recently as though I’d succeeded, but I am beginning to fear—what with peace blanketing all the bad old predatory instincts and temperance creeping like a tidal wave over the mortal world—My time is getting short. I must think—must concentrate.”