“But back of all that, behind the last reserve, the last shell-dump, the last treasury, haven’t they got something that we’ve never had?”
“And what’s that?”
“A dream.”
“A what?”
“A dream. We’ve dreamed no dream. Yes—let me say it! A little while ago you said, ‘nightmare,’ and I said, ‘dream.’ Germany has dreamed a dream. Black as the pit of hell,—yes, yes,—but a dream. They’ve seen a vision. A red, bloody, damned vision,—yes, yes,—but a vision. They’ve got a programme, even if it’s what you called it, a ‘rehearsed and abominable programme.’ And they know what they want. And we don’t know what we want!”
The doctor’s fist came down in the palm of his hand.
“What we want? I’ll tell you what we want, Hallett. We want to win this war!”
“Yes?”
“And by the living God, Hallett, we will win this war! I can see again. If we fight for half a century to come; if we turn the world wrong-side-out for men, young men, boys, babes; if we mine the earth to a hollow shell for coal and iron; if we wear our women to ghosts to get out the last grain of wheat from the fields—we’ll do it! And we’ll wipe this black thing from the face of the earth forever, root and branch, father and son of the bloody race of them to the end of time. If you want a dream, Hallett, there’s a—”
“There’s a—nightmare. An overweening muscular impulse to jump on the thing that’s scared us in the dark, to break it with our hands, grind it into the ground with our heels, tear ourselves away from it—and wake up.”