"That's it, no matter what we pay!" declared Stransky. "We're not going back there except in hearses!" He swung his hand in a semicircle toward the distant hills, gold and purple in their dying foliage under the autumn sunlight.
Then the telephone in the redoubt brought some news. The staff begged to inform the army that the enemy's casualties in the last three days had been two hundred thousand! Immediately everybody was talking at once in Stransky's parliament, as he sometimes called that company of which he was, in the final analysis, unlimited monarch.
"How do they know?"
"Do you think it's fake?"
"That sums up to pretty near a million!"
"My God! Think of it—a million!"
"We're whittling them down!"
"It doesn't make any difference whether Partow or Lanstron is chief of staff!"
"They're paying!"
"Paying for our fellows that they've killed! Paying for being in the wrong!"