[CHAPTER XII--THE DESERTER]
"Come now, Reinecke, you have been away two months or so. What is the truth of things? We are fed here with what I am convinced are false, or at any rate too rosy, reports. Coming from the centre you ought to be well informed, and I want to know exactly how matters stand."
Major von Rudenheim bent forward and fixed his hard blue eyes on Reinecke. They were sitting in the major's quarters. Reinecke had just returned from a mission which had carried him right across the country, and after delivering dispatches at headquarters had lost no time in visiting his friend the major.
"What is the truth?" said Reinecke, flicking the ash from his cigar irritably. "Who knows? They said that Paris would fall before the British Army got across the Channel; now it is said that Paris has not fallen, though the British Army has been annihilated."
"And the Fleet?"
"The British are skulking in their harbours and won't fight. We have bombarded most of their commercial ports out of existence, but they had been laying in such enormous stocks of food in anticipation of the war that it will take a year or so to starve them out. So it's said."
"But surely if the ships won't fight we command the sea and can bring them to terms. It ought to be over by Christmas."
"Yes, the Kaiser is to eat his Christmas dinner in London. But the fact is, Major, we're living on rumours. The British smashed up our wireless installation at Dar-es-Salam, and we haven't had any really authentic news from Germany since a fortnight after war broke out. As for this country, we are not doing so well as we ought to have done. We've taken some places inside their frontier, but they've put up a surprisingly good defence, and at present it's stalemate. Apparently they are bringing troops from India----"
"In spite of our Fleet?"
"Yes, in spite of our Fleet. Tirpitz deserves to be cashiered."