their advantage, and they lacked the cavalry to pursue the fugitives.  Their beasts were even more exhausted than the men.  When those who were retreating found that they were being spurred on with lessening tenacity, they had stretched themselves, half-dead with fatigue, on the field, excavating the ground and forming a refuge for themselves.  The French also flung themselves down, scraping the soil together so as not to lose what they had gained. . . .  And in this way began the war of the trenches.”

Then each line, with the intention of wrapping itself around that of the enemy, had gone on prolonging itself toward the Northeast, and from these successive stretchings had resulted the double course toward the sea—­forming the greatest battle front ever known to history.

When Don Marcelo with optimistic enthusiasm announced the end of the war in the following Spring or Summer—­in four months at the outside—­the Russian shook his head.

“It will be long . . . very long.  It is a new war, the genuine modern warfare.  The Germans began hostilities in the old way as though they had observed nothing since 1870—­a war of involved movements, of battles in the open field, the same as Moltke might have planned, imitating Napoleon.  They were desirous of bringing it to a speedy conclusion, and were sure of triumph.  Why employ new methods? . . .  But the encounter of the Marne twisted their plans, making them shift from the aggressive to the defensive.  They then brought into service all that the war staff had learned in the campaigns of the Japanese and Russians, beginning the war of the trenches, the subterranean struggle which is the logical outcome of the reach and number of shots of the modern armament.  The conquest of half a mile of territory to-day stands for more than did the assault of a stone fortress a century ago.  Neither side is going to make any headway for a long time.  Perhaps they may never make a definite advance.  The war is bound to be long and tedious, like the athletic conquests between opponents who are equally matched.”

“But it will have to come to an end, sometime,” interpolated Desnoyers.

“Undoubtedly, but who knows when? . . .  And in what condition will they both be when it is all over?” . . .

He was counting upon a rapid finale when it was least expected, through the exhaustion of one of the contestants, carefully dissimulated until the last moment.

“Germany will be vanquished,” he added with firm conviction.  “I do not know when nor how, but she will fall logically.  She failed in her master-stroke in not entering Paris and overcoming its opposition.  All the trumps in her pack of cards were then played.  She did not win, but continues playing the game because she holds many cards, and she will prolong it for a long time to come. . . .  But what she could not do at first, she will never be able to do.”

For Tchernoff, the final defeat did not mean the destruction of Germany nor the annihilation of the German people.