In a distant part of the field all this time was posted the commander-in-chief of the army of attack. Like all wise commanders in all well-conducted battles, he was far removed from the blinding smoke, from the distracting confusion. He had placed himself where he could hear, see, instantly direct, without being disturbed by trifling reverse or success, by unimportant rumors to vast proportions blown. To play his game for dominion or destruction John Dumont had had himself arrayed in a wine-colored, wadded silk dressing-gown over his white silk pajamas and had stretched himself on a divan in his sitting-room in his palace. A telephone and a stock-ticker within easy reach were his field-glasses and his aides--the stock-ticker would show him second by second the precise posture of the battle; the telephone would enable him to direct it to the minutest manoeuver. The telephone led to the ear of his chief of staff, Tavistock, who was at his desk in his privatest office in the Mills Building, about him telephones straight to the ears of the division commanders. None of these knew who was his commander; indeed, none knew that there was to be a battle or, after the battle was on, that they were part of one of its two contending armies. They would blindly obey orders, ignorant who was aiming the guns they fired and at whom those guns were aimed. Such conditions would have been fatal to the barbaric struggles for supremacy which ambition has waged through all the past; they are ideal conditions for these modern conflicts of the market which more and more absorb the ambitions of men. Instead of shot and shell and regiments of "cannon food," there are battalions of capital, the paper certificates of the stored-up toil or trickery of men; instead of mangled bodies and dead, there are minds in the torment of financial peril or numb with the despair of financial ruin. But the stakes are the same old stakes--power and glory and wealth for a few, thousands on thousands dragged or cozened into the battle in whose victory they share scantily, if at all, although they bear its heaviest losses on both sides. It was half-past eight o'clock when Dumont put the receiver to his ear and greeted Tavistock in a strong, cheerful voice. "Never felt better in my life," was his answer to Tavistock's inquiry as to his health. "Even old Sackett admits I'm in condition. But he says I must have no irritations--so, be careful to carry out orders." He felt as well as he said. His body seemed the better for its rest and purification, for its long freedom from his occasional but terrific assaults upon it, for having got rid of the superfluous flesh which had been swelling and weighting it.