The luncheon party consisted of Lady Christina, as bolt upright as ever, at the head of the table; Eric, at the foot; Lord Eskerley; and a weather-beaten Lieutenant-Commander of the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, named John Wickersham. Five years ago he had been mainly known to fame as a prominent King's Counsel, a superb bridge-player, and a fair-weather yachtsman. Now, for three years or more, his converted pleasure-craft, navigated by its owner and enrolled an original member of a certain silent, unadvertised brotherhood of the sea, had been keeping grim vigil over our island coast, with such effect that German submarine crews were breaking into open mutiny rather than face that flotilla of terror any longer. John Wickersham was ashore on long leave, for the first time for many months.
Doctor Chirnside, who seldom missed his Sunday luncheon at Buckholm, had been called away, to say what he could to a girl-wife who had just received a telegram from the War Office.
Having consumed its meat ration and sugarless apple tart, the company proceeded to mitigate the austerity of Lady Christina's war-time régime with a glass of port. Then, after a perfunctory and short-lived struggle, we yielded to the inevitable and settled down to the topic of the military situation. It was a curious experience for me, who had heard little round that peaceful table since boyhood but hunting shop and county gossip, to find myself involved in the same eternal debate as was exercising every mess, billet, and dug-out on the Western Front—a debate distinguished in both cases by extreme personal bias and entire ignorance of essential details. It is hardly necessary to mention that Lord Eskerley, the one person who could have enlightened us, offered no contribution.
Naturally we concentrated upon the rumours of the knock-out blow which Germany was preparing to deal her arch-enemy in the early spring—a blow which came near, in the actual event, to driving a wedge between the armies of France and Britain, and establishing a German base on the English Channel. But in January, nineteen-eighteen, when we had not lost a field-gun or a trench system since the First Battle of Ypres, and had been steadily winning back the soil of France and accumulating German prisoners for more than three years, no one took such a possibility seriously. Eric was particularly sanguine.
"A good thing, too!" he said. "Let them come! Then we can sit well back, and make a clean job of the lot, instead of getting hot and dusty going to look for them! This war will end when we have killed enough Boches; and if the Boches will help us by coming along to get killed—and you know what the Boche can do in that way once he gives his mind to it—there will be no complaints on our side. I feel—"
This characteristic pronouncement was interrupted by Lord Eskerley.
"It's only human nature, you know," he said. "You can't blame them. Naturally they think of their own front first. Must!"
This did not seem to fit in well with the rest of the conversation—a not altogether unusual feature of his lordship's table-talk.
"Napoleon was right," he continued. "Or was it Hannibal? Said he would sooner fight two first-class generals collaborating than one single-handed second-rater. It works out this way. Tweedledum says to Tweedledee: 'You must take over more Front.' Tweedledee says to Tweedledum: 'It can't be done! Look at my casualty list for the last three months!' Tweedledum replies: 'But you are only holding about half as much line as I am.' Thereupon Tweedledee produces statistics to show that although he holds the shorter line he has sixty-seven and a half per cent. of the enemy massed against him. And so it goes on. The old game! I believe that in Bohemian circles it is known as 'Passing the Buck.' A colloquial but apposite expression! I picked it up from an American attaché in Paris. In due course we shall come to the only solution—a Supreme Commander, responsible for the safety of the whole line. But, as usual, we shall pay in advance—through the nose!"
The import of the old gentleman's ruminations was now tolerably apparent to all; that is, to all but our hostess.