“You know the keys to play on, though,” remarked Westerling with a complimentary smile.  “No one knows quite so well.”

“I ought to,” replied the premier.  “That was the purpose of the semi-official communique about Bodlapoo, which, of course, we can repudiate later, if need be.  I saw that the brilliant forced march of our commander had excited popular enthusiasm.  It does not matter if he were in the wrong.  Will race feeling rise to the pitch of war from this touchstone with the proper urging?  Of course, the impulse must come from the people themselves.  We must seem to resist it, the better to arouse it.”  He bent the paper-knife into a bow with fingers that were rigid.  “Times are hard, factions are bitter, our cabinet is in danger, with economic and political chaos from overpopulation in sight,” he continued.  “We hunger for land, for fresh opportunities for development.  An outburst of patriotism, concentrating every thought of the nation on war!—­is that the way out?”

Westerling had only answered questions so far.  Here was his cue for argument.

“We were never so ready,” he said.  “War must come some time.  We should choose the moment, not leave it to chance.  The nation needs war as a stimulant, as a corrective, as a physician.  We grow stale; we think of our domestic troubles.  The old racial passions are weakening and with them our virility.  Victory will make room for millions in the place of the thousands who fall.  The indemnity will bring prosperity.  Because we have had no war, because the long peace has been abnormal, is the reason you have all this agitation and all these strikes.  They will be at an end.  Those who are fit to rule will be in power.”

“And you are sure—­sure we can win?” the premier asked with a long, tense look at Westerling, who was steady under the scrutiny.

“Absolutely!” he answered.  “Five millions against three!  It’s mathematics, or our courage and skill are not equal to theirs Absolutely!  We have the power, why not use it?  We do not live in a dream age!”

The premier sank deeper in his chair.  He was silent, thinking.  He who had carried off so many great coups with rare ease was on the threshold of one that made them all seem petty.  He had heard random talk that some of the officers of the staff considered Westerling to be lath painted to look like steel.  There was a reported remark by Turcas, his assistant, implying that the ability to achieve a position did not mean the ability to fill it.  Jealousy, no doubt; the jealousy of rivals!  The premier himself was used to having members of his own cabinet ever on the watch for the vulnerable spot in his back, which he had never allowed them to find.  Yet, there was the case of Louis Napoleon.  He had the ability to achieve a position; he had been the lath painted to look like steel.  He had all the externals which the layman associates with victory until he went to the supreme test, which ripped him into slivers of rotten wood.  The little Napoleon had been one of the premier’s favorite bugaboo examples of stage realism tried out in real life.  But it was ridiculous to compare him with the stalwart figure sitting across the table, who had spoken the language of materialism without illusion.