“But they’re _doing_ it! They’re doing that same preposterous thing before our eyes, and we can’t touch them, and they’re— Hallett! _They’re damn near done!_ Behind that line there,—you know the line I mean,—who of us doesn’t know it? That thin line of smoke and ashes and black blood, like a bent black wire over France! Behind that line they’re at work, day by day, month after month, building the empire we never believed. And Hallett, _it’s damn near done_! And we can’t stop it. It grows bigger and bigger, darker and darker—it covers up the sky—like a nightmare—” “Like a dream!” said Hallett softly; “a dream.” The doctor’s boot-soles drummed with a dull, angry resonance on the deck. “And we can’t touch them! They couldn’t conceivably hold that line against us—against the whole world—long enough to build their incredible empire behind it. _And they have!_ Hallett! How _could_ they ever have held it?” “You mean, how could we ever have held it?” Hallett’s words flowed on, smooth, clear-formed, unhurried, and his eyes kept staring at the star. “No, it’s we have held it, not they. And we that have got to hold it—longer than they. Theirs is the kind of a _Mittel-Europa_ that’s been done before; history is little more than a copybook for such an empire as they are building. We’ve got a vaster and more incredible empire to build than they—a _Mittel-Europa_, let us say, of the spirit of man. No, no, doctor; it’s we that are doing the impossible, holding that thin line.” The doctor failed to contain himself. “Oh, pshaw! _pshaw!_ See here, Hallett! We’ve had the men, and there’s no use blinking the truth. And we’ve had the money and the munitions.” “But back of all that, behind the last reserve, the last shell-dump, the last treasury, haven’t they got something that we’ve never had?” “And what’s that?” “A dream.” “A _what_?” “A dream. We’ve dreamed no dream. Yes—let me say it! A little while ago you said, ‘nightmare,’ and I said, ‘dream.’ Germany has dreamed a dream. Black as the pit of hell,—yes, yes,—but a dream. They’ve seen a vision. A red, bloody, damned vision,—yes, yes,—but a vision. They’ve got a programme, even if it’s what you called it, a ‘rehearsed and abominable programme.’ And they know what they want. And we don’t know what we want!” The doctor’s fist came down in the palm of his hand. “What we want? I’ll tell you what we want, Hallett. _We want to win this war!_” “Yes?” “And by the living God, Hallett, we will win this war! I can see again. If we fight for half a century to come; if we turn the world wrong-side-out for men, young men, boys, babes; if we mine the earth to a hollow shell for coal and iron; if we wear our women to ghosts to get out the last grain of wheat from the fields—we’ll do it! And we’ll wipe this black thing from the face of the earth forever, root and branch, father and son of the bloody race of them to the end of time. If you want a dream, Hallett, there’s a—”