Hallett’s question, very faint across the subdued breathings and showerings of the ship, fetched the doctor up. He stood for a moment, rocking on his legs and staring at the face of the questioner, still and faintly luminous on the invisible cot. Then he laughed briefly, shook himself, and ignored the preposterous words. He recollected tardily that the fellow was pretty well gone. “No,” he went on. “Up to to-night I’ve never doubted. No one in the world, in _our_ part of the world, has doubted. The proposition was absurd to begin with. Prussia, and her fringe of hangers-on, to stand against the world—to stand against the very drift and destiny of civilization? Impossible! A man can’t do the impossible; that’s logic, Hallett, and that’s common sense. They might have their day of it, their little hour, because they had the jump—but in the end! _in the end!_— But look at them, will you! Look at them! That’s what’s got me to-night, Hallett. Look at them! There they stand. They won’t play the game, won’t abide at all by the rules of logic, of common sense. Every day, every hour, they perform the impossible. Not once since the war was a year old have they been able to hang out another six months. They’d be wiped from the earth; their people would starve. They’re wiped from the earth, and they remain. They starve and lay down their skinny bodies on the ground, and they stand up again with sleek bellies. They make preposterous, blind boasts. They say, ‘We’ll over-run Roumania in a month.’ Fantastic! It’s _done_! They say, ‘Russia? New-born Russia? Strong young boy-Russia? We’ll put him out of it for good and all by Christmas.’ That was to cheer up the hungry ones in Berlin. Everybody saw through it. The very stars laughed. _It’s done!_ God, Hallett! It’s like clockwork. It’s like a rehearsed and abominable programme—” “Yes—a programme.” The wounded man lay quite still and gazed at the star. When he spoke, his words carried an odd sense of authenticity, finality. His mind had got a little away from him, and now it was working with the new, oracular clarity of the moribund. It bothered the doctor inexplicably—tripped him up. He had to shake himself. He began to talk louder and make wide, scarcely visible gestures. “We’ve laughed so long, Hallett. There was _Mittel-Europa_! We always laughed at that. A wag’s tale. To think of it—a vast, self-sufficient, brutal empire laid down across the path of the world! Ha-ha! Why, even if they had _wanted_ it, it would be—” “If they _wanted_ it, it would be—_inevitable_.” The doctor held up for a full dozen seconds. A kind of anger came over him and his face grew red. He couldn’t understand. He talked still louder.