"Hercules! Hercules!" shouted Foster. "What had Hercules to do with it? He's a first-class fraud. It was Slewey who won the battle. You don't mean to tell me that you are Hercules men?"
Sam and Cleary tried in vain to explain their position, but Foster would not listen to them. The breach evidently was irreparable. He magnanimously turned over the cab to them, and went back to the city in another vehicle.
"Well, this is strange," said Sam. "I liked everything about Captain Foster, but I don't understand this."
"Oh, you will tho, old man," said Cleary. "I've found out this morning that it's the same thing all through the army and navy here. They're hardly any of them on speaking terms. If it isn't one thing it's another. It's the Whoppington fashion, that's all. The general of the army won't speak to the adjutant-general there, and they're always smuggling bills into Congress to retire each other, and that spirit runs all the way down through both services. I'm a civilian now, and I can see with a little perspective. I don't know why military people are always squabbling like the women in an old ladies' home. No other professions do; it's queer. It's getting to be better to lose a battle than to win it, for then you don't have to fight for a year or two to find out who won it."
Sam entered a feeble protest against Cleary's criticisms, and the two relapsed into silence.
"Who did win that naval victory anyhow?" said Sam at last.
"That's just what I'd like to know," responded Cleary. "One of the admirals admits he wasn't there, and, if we are to believe the naval people, the other one spent most of his time dodging around the smokestack. But I think they're a little too hard on him; I can't imagine why. I hear they're going to establish a permanent court at Whoppington to determine who wins victories in future. It's not a bad idea. My own view is that that battle won itself, and I shouldn't be surprised if that was the way with most battles. It would be fun to run a war without admirals and generals and see how it would come out. I don't believe there'd be much difference. At any rate it looks so, if what the navy says is true, and one of the admirals was away and the other playing tag on the forward deck of the Philadelphia. Rum name for a battle-ship, the Brotherly Love, isn't it?"
To this Sam made no answer.
On arriving at the barracks he succeeded in having a separate room assigned to him, and thenceforth he and Foster were strangers.