The doctor held up for a full dozen seconds. A kind of anger came over him and his face grew red. He couldn’t understand. He talked still louder.
“But they’re doing it! They’re doing that same preposterous thing before our eyes, and we can’t touch them, and they’re— Hallett! They’re damn near done! Behind that line there,—you know the line I mean,—who of us doesn’t know it? That thin line of smoke and ashes and black blood, like a bent black wire over France! Behind that line they’re at work, day by day, month after month, building the empire we never believed. And Hallett, it’s damn near done! And we can’t stop it. It grows bigger and bigger, darker and darker—it covers up the sky—like a nightmare—”
“Like a dream!” said Hallett softly; “a dream.”
The doctor’s boot-soles drummed with a dull, angry resonance on the deck.
“And we can’t touch them! They couldn’t conceivably hold that line against us—against the whole world—long enough to build their incredible empire behind it. And they have! Hallett! How could they ever have held it?”
“You mean, how could we ever have held it?”
Hallett’s words flowed on, smooth, clear-formed, unhurried, and his eyes kept staring at the star.
“No, it’s we have held it, not they. And we that have got to hold it—longer than they. Theirs is the kind of a Mittel-Europa that’s been done before; history is little more than a copybook for such an empire as they are building. We’ve got a vaster and more incredible empire to build than they—a Mittel-Europa, let us say, of the spirit of man. No, no, doctor; it’s we that are doing the impossible, holding that thin line.”
The doctor failed to contain himself.
“Oh, pshaw! pshaw! See here, Hallett! We’ve had the men, and there’s no use blinking the truth. And we’ve had the money and the munitions.”