The Last Shot

by Frederick Palmer

This question, too, was answered.

"War has never brought prosperity," Partow had written. "Its purpose is to destroy, and destruction can never be construction. The conclusion of a war has often assured a period of peace; and peace gave the impetus of prosperity attributed to war. A man is strong in what he achieves, not through the gifts he receives or the goods he steals. Indemnity will not raise another blade of wheat in our land. To take it from a beaten man will foster in him the desire to beat his adversary in turn and recover the amount and more. Then we shall have the apprehension of war always in the air, and soon another war and more destruction. Remove the danger of a European cataclysm, and any sum extorted from the Grays becomes paltry beside the wealth that peace will create. An indemnity makes the purpose of the courage of the Grays in their assaults and of the Browns in their resistance that of the burglar and the looter. There is no money value to a human life when it is your own; and our soldiers gave their lives. Do not cheapen their service."

"Considering the part that we played at The Hague," observed the foreign minister, "it would be rather inconsistent for us not to—"

"There is only one thing to do. Lanstron has got us!" replied the premier. "We must jump in at the head of the procession and receive the mud or the bouquets, as it happens."

With Partow's and the staff's appeals went an equally earnest one from the premier and his cabinet. Naturally, the noisy element of the cities was the first to find words. It shouted in rising anger that Lanstron had betrayed the nation. Army officers whom Partow had retired for leisurely habits said that he and Lanstron had struck at their own calling. But the average man and woman, in a daze from the shock of the appeals after a night's celebration, were reading and wondering and asking their neighbors' opinions. If not in Partow's then in the staff's message they found the mirror that set their own ethical professions staring at them.

Before they had made up their minds the correspondents at the front had set the wires singing to the evening editions; for Lanstron had directed that they be given the ran of the army's lines at daybreak. They told of soldiers awakening after the debauch of yesterday's fighting, normal and rested, glowing with the security of possession of the frontier and responding to their leaders' sentiment; of officers of the type favored by Partow who would bring the industry that commands respect to any calling, taking Lanstron's views as worthy of their profession; of that irrepressible poet laureate of the soldiers, Captain Stransky, I.C. (iron cross), breaking forth in a new song to an old tune, expressing his brotherhood ideas in a "We-have-ours-let-them-keep-theirs" chorus that was spreading from regiment to regiment.

This left the retired officers to grumble in their coiners that war was no longer a gentleman's vocation, and silenced the protests of their natural ally in the business of making war, the noisy element, which promptly adapted itself to a new fashion in the relation of nations. Again the great square was packed and again a wave-like roar of cheers greeted the white speck of an eminent statesman's head. All the ideas that had been fomenting in the minds of a people for a generation became a living force of action to break through the precedents born of provincial passion with a new precedent; for the power of public opinion can be as swift in its revolutions as decisive victories at arms. The world at large, after rubbing its forehead and readjusting its eye-glasses and clearing its throat, exclaimed:

"Why not? Isn't that what we have all been thinking and desiring? Only nobody knew how or where to begin."

The premier of the Browns found himself talking over the long distance to the premier of the Grays in as neighborly a fashion as if they had adjoining estates and were arranging a matter of community interest.

"You have been so fine in waiving an indemnity," said the premier of the Grays, "that Turcas suggests we pay for all the damage done to property on your side by our invasion. I'm sure our people will rise to the suggestion. Their mood has overwhelmed every preconceived notion of mine. In place of the old suspicion that a Brown could do nothing except with a selfish motive is the desire to be as fair as the Browns. And the practical way the people look at it makes me think that it will be enduring."