lants like this operating. If they called off their silly
war (Beethoven down in the cellar during the siege of Vienna expresses
the right attitude) and went home, the country would fall back into
depression, we'd have some kind of revolution and everybody'd be better
off."

I had suspected him of being some kind of parlor radical and although he
would doubtless outgrow his youthful notions, it made me uneasy to have
a crank in my employ. But beyond urging him to keep his ideas strictly
to himself and not leave any more memopads scribbled over with clef
signs on his desk, I could do nothing, for upon his retention depended
his father's goodwill--the general's assignment to a fieldcommand hadnt
altered the status of our contracts--and we had too many unscrupulous
competitors to rely solely upon merit for the continuance of our sales.

George Thario's attitude was symptomatic of the demoralization of the
country, apparent even during our momentary success. There was no will
to victory, and the generalstaff, if one could believe General Thario,
was too unimaginative and inflexible to meet the peculiar conditions of
a war circumscribed and shaped by the alien glacier dividing the country
and diverting normal operations into novel channels.

So the new landings at Astoria and Longview, though anticipated and
indeed precisely indicated by the flimsiness of the Russian resistance
to the counteroffensive, caught the highcommand by surprise. "Never was
a military operation more certain," wrote General Thario, "and never was
less done to meet the certainty. Albert, if a businessman conducted
himself like the military college he would be bankrupt in six months."
Wherever the fault lay, the American gains were wiped out and the
invaders swept ahead to occupy all of the country west of the grass.

Boastfully, they sent us newsreels of their entries into Portland and
Seattle. They established headquarters in San Francisco and paraded
forty abreast down Market Street--renamed Krassny Prospekt. The Russians
also renamed Montgomery Street and Van Ness after Mooney and Billings
respectively, but for some reason abandoned these designations almost
immediately.

But for all their celebrations and 101 gun salutes, this was as far as
they could go; the monstrous growth which had clogged our defense now
sealed the invaders off and held them in an evershrinking sector. Now
came another period of quiescence in the war, but a period radicall