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By Root 4539 0

the playing-card. A vice so long ingrained in man as to have become an honorable tenet of his behavior and the national altar for his love of bloodshed and glorious sacrifice. More than that even: a pillar not of his nation's supremacy but of his national survival; you and I have seen war as the last recourse of politics; I shant of course but you will-can-see it become the last refuge from bankruptcy; you will-can, provided you will-see the day when a nation insolvent from over-population will declare war on whatever richest and most sentimen-Thursday Night tal opponent it can persuade to defeat it quickest, in order to feed its people out of the conqueror's quartermaster stores. But that is not our problem today; and even if it were, by simply being in alliance with the ultimate victor, we-France and Britain-would find ourselves in the happy situation of gaining almost as much from our victory as the German will through his defeat. Our-call it mine if you like-problem is more immediate. There is the earth. You will have half of it now; by New Year's you will very probably have all of it, all the vast scope of it except this minuscule suppuration which men call Europe-and who knows? in time and with a little discretion and care, even that again if you like. Take my car-you can drive one, can't you?'

Tes,' the corporal said. 'Go?'

'Now,' the old general said. 'Take my car. If you can drive at all, the pennon on its bonnet will carry you anywhere in Europe west of the German wire; if you can drive well, the engine beneath it will take you to the coast-Brest or Marseille either-in two days; I have papers ready to pass you aboard any ship you choose there and command its captain. Then South America-Asia-the Pacific islands; close that window fast; lock it forever on that aberrant and futile dream. No no,' he said quickly, 'dont for one second suspect me of that base misreading of your character-you who in five minutes Monday voided that war which the German himself, the best soldier in Europe, in almost four years has never quite nudged from stalemate. Of course you will have money, but only that balance exactly matched to freedom as the eagle or the bandit carry theirs. I dont bribe you with money. I give you liberty,'

To desert them,' the corporal said.

'Desert whom? Look again.' His hand appeared in a brief rapid gesture toward the wan city unsleeping below them-a gesture not even contemptuous, not anything: just a flick, then gone, already vanished again within the midnight-colored cloak. 'Not them. Where have they been since Monday? Why with their bare hands, since they have enough of them, have they not torn down brick by brick the walls which far fewer hands than theirs sufficed to raise, or torn from its hinges that one door which only one hand sufficed to lock, and set all of you free who had essayed to die for them? Where are the two thousand nine hundred and eighty-seven others you had-or thought you had-at dawn Monday? Why, as soon as you were through the wire, didn't all of them cast down their arms too and simply follow you, if they too believed you were all weaponed and bucklered out of the arsenal of invulnerable human aspiration and hope and belief? Why didn't even that mere three thousand then-they would have been enough-erase the bricks and wrench away that door, who believed in you for five minutes any-way enough to risk what you anyway knew you risked-the three thousand that is lacking the twelve who have been locked inside the same incommunicant bricks with you ever since? Where are they even? One of them, your own countryman, blood brother, kinsman probably since you were all blood kin at some time there-one Zsettlani who has denied you, and the other, whether Zsettlani or not or blood kin or not, at least was-or anyway had been accepted into-the brotherhood of your faith and hope-Polchek, who had already betrayed you by midnight Sunday. Do you see? You even have a substitute to your need as on that afternoon God produced the lamb which saved Isaac-if you could call Polchek a lamb, I will take Polchek