There is much in good generalship, and one of its axioms is that you should endeavour to discover your enemy’s weakest point. Never once did it dawn on Gibbons or any of his lieutenants, that the fortress they were attacking had only to be approached in one direction, when the walls would have crumbled like those of Jericho; never did it occur to him that Sartwell was fighting at the same time two battles--one with the men and one with the masters, and of the two contests he feared the result of the latter most. Sartwell was between two fires; he had urged both Monkton and Hope to quit England until the fight was over, and leave the conducting of it to him. They vacillated; in the evening Sartwell might have their promise, but in the morning they had changed what they were pleased to call their minds. They always feared the worst. They saw the factory in flames, and the mob shot down by troops. They implored Sartwell to come to some agreement with the men. He had said the strike would be over in three weeks, and here it was still dragging on, the men as determined as ever. If he were wrong about the duration of the fight, might he not be wrong also in his treatment of the men? Was no compromise possible? This sort of thing Sartwell had to contend with, and it wearied him more than the strike itself. He opened the papers in daily fear that he would find there some letter from the firm, in answer to the strictures of the day before, which would show the public at once how the land lay. Gibbons believed that the backbone of a fight was money, as in many cases it is; but a moment’s reflection might have shown him that, if the fight was to be conducted on a cash basis, the strikers had not a ghost of a chance, because the firm of Monkton & Hope was much richer than the Union. He believed in fighting the devil with fire. Adages are supposed to represent the condensed wisdom of the ages, whereas they too often represent condensed foolishness. If one has to meet an expert swordsman on the field of honour, he should select a pistol if he has the choice of weapons. Fight the devil if you like, but never with fire. When Marsten had said to Gibbons, “Mr. Sart-well knows to a penny how much you have in the bank,” the secretary had answered grandly that Sart-well might see the books of the Union for all he cared, and much good might it do him. The fact that a man like Sartwell thought it worth his while to find out what the enemy was doing, did not suggest to Gibbons that it might not be a bad plan to have a look over Sartwell’s shoulders, and discover just how things were going in the privacy of the manager’s office. When Marsten ferreted out various things as the fight progressed, and brought his knowledge to Gibbons, the latter waved it aside as of no consequence, treating Marsten throughout as an enemy in the camp.