t is answered forever!"

"But are you so sure of victory?" asked Desnoyers. "Sometimes Destiny
gives us great surprises. There are hidden forces that we must take into
consideration or they may overturn the best-laid plans."

The smile of the Doctor became increasingly scornful and arrogant.
Everything had been foreseen and studied out long ago with the most
minute Germanic method. What had they to fear? . . . The enemy most to
be reckoned with was France, incapable of resisting the enervating moral
influences, the sufferings, the strain and the privations of war;--a
nation physically debilitated and so poisoned by revolutionary spirit
that it had laid aside the use of arms through an exaggerated love of
comfort.

"Our generals," he announced, "are going to leave her in such a state
that she will never again cross our path."

There was Russia, too, to consider, but her amorphous masses were slow
to assemble and unwieldy to move. The Executive Staff of Berlin had
timed everything by measure for crushing France in four weeks, and would
then lead its enormous forces against the Russian empire before it could
begin action.

"We shall finish with the bear after killing the cock," affirmed the
professor triumphantly.

But guessing at some objection from his cousin, he hastened on--"I know
what you are going to tell me. There remains another enemy, one that has
not yet leaped into the lists but which all the Germans are waiting for.
That one inspires more hatred than all the others put together, because
it is of our blood, because it is a traitor to the race. . . . Ah, how
we loathe it!"

And in the tone in which these words were uttered throbbed an expression
of hatred and a thirst for vengeance which astonished both listeners.

"Even though England attack us," continued Hartrott, "we shall conquer,
notwithstanding. This adversary is not more terrible than the others.
For the past century she has ruled the world. Upon the fall of Napoleon
she seized the continental hegemony, and will fight to keep it. But
what does her energy amount to? . . . As our Bernhardi says, the English
people are merely a nation of renters and sportsmen. Their army is
formed from the dregs of the nation. The country lacks military spirit.
We are a people of warriors, and it will be an easy thing for us to
conquer the English, debilitated by a false conception of life."

The Doctor paused and then added: "We are counting on the internal
corr