e band."

"It'll be a score off Ford," said Gregg, "if you succeed. But I don't
expect you will."

CHAPTER XI

Inflexible determination is one of the qualities which the truly great
leader of men shares with the domestic pig; though in the case of the
pig it is generally spoken of as obstinacy. But the leader--General,
Prime Minister or Captain of Industry--is distinguished from the pig by
a certain intellectual suppleness which makes his obstinacy a more
effective though less showy thing. The pig, being determined to go his
own way, has no better idea than to tug desperately against the rope
which is tied round his ankle. He tugs unwaveringly up to the very
last moment, but in the end he is beaten because his master, having at
command stout sticks and other instruments of torture, is stronger
than he is. It is noble and heroic of the pig to persist in refusing
to recognise that merely tugging the opposite way is no use to him. The
great commander is wiser and in reality no less noble. He realises very
early that destiny, armed with whips and goads, has a rope round his
leg. He tugs, but when he finds that the rope will not break and
that the whip cuts cruelly, he stops tugging and goes about to outwit
destiny. Pretending to yield to the pull of the rope, he succeeds at
last in getting his own way. Thus a general, faced by a hostile army,
securely entrenched on the opposite bank of a deep river, does not
make more than one attempt to swim his men across in the face of a
concentrated rifle fire. The pig would make several attempts, would go
on trying until he had no soldiers left, because he would feel that
the only thing really worth doing was to assert himself against the
confident foe. But the general, when he has lost enough men to convince
him of the impossibility of a frontal attack by swimming, stops trying
it and adopts another plan. He sees not only the insolent flags which
wave upon the opposite bank, but the far off end of the campaign. He is
not less determined than the pig would be to chastise the foe which is
thwarting him, but he sees that this can be done quite as effectually
by occupying the enemy's capital as by the mere winning of a battle. He
understands that it is good to sacrifice the immediate for the sake of
the ultimate object. He gives up the idea of fighting his way across and
sends out scouts to discover the source of the river. When he finds
it he leaves part of his army to watch t