The throbbing activity of the streets of the capital, as his car proceeded on the way to her hotel, formed an energetic accompaniment to his gratifying backward survey of how all his plans had worked out from the very day of the prophecy.  Had he heard the remark of a great manufacturer to the banker at his side in a passing limousine, “There goes the greatest captain of industry of us all!” Westerling would only have thought:  “Certainly.  I am chief of staff.  I am at the head of all your workmen at one time or another!” Had he heard the banker’s answer, “But pretty poor pay, pretty small dividends!” he would have thought:  “Splendid dividends—­the dividends of power!”

He had a caste contempt for the men of commerce, with their mercenary talk about credit and market prices; and also for the scientists, doctors, engineers, and men of other professions, who spoke of things in books which he did not understand.  Reading books was one of the faults of Turcas, his assistant.  No bookish soldier, he knew, had ever been a great general.  He resented the growing power of these leaders of the civil world, taking distinction away from the military, even when, as a man of parts, he had to court their influence.  His was the profession that was and ever should be the elect.  A penniless subaltern was a gentleman, while he could never think of a man hi business as one.

All the faces in the street belonged to a strange, busy world outside his interest and thoughts.  They formed what was known as the public, often making a clatter About things which they did not understand, when they Should obey the orders of their superiors.  Of late, their clatter had been about the extra taxes for the recent increase of the standing forces by another corps.  The public was bovine with a parrot’s head.  Yet it did not admire the toiling ox, but the eagle and the lion.

As his car came to the park his eyes lighted at sight of one of the dividends—­one feature of urban life that ever gave him a thrill.  A battalion of the 128th, which he had ordered that afternoon to the very garrison at South La Tir that he had once commanded, was marching through the main avenue.  Youths all, of twenty-one or two, they were in a muddy-grayish uniform which was the color of the plain as seen from the veranda of the Galland house.

Around them, in a mighty, pervasive monotone, was the roar of city traffic, broken by the nearer sounds of the cries of children playing in the sand piles, the bark of motor horns, the screech of small boys’ velocipedes on the paths of the park; while they themselves were silent, except for the rhythmic tramp of the military shoes of identical pattern, as was every article of their clothing and equipment from head to foot, whose character had been the subject of the weightiest deliberation of the staff.

How much can a soldier carry and how best carry it easily?  What shoes are the most serviceable for marching and yet cheap?  Nothing was so precise in all their surroundings, nothing seemed so resolutely dependable as this column of soldiers.  They were the last word in filling human tissue into a mould for a set task.  Where these came from were other boys growing up to take their places.  The mothers of the nation were doing their duty.  All the land was a breeding-ground for the dividends of Hedworth Westerling.