I saw that he was bursting to have a talk, and, by Jove, it would be good policy to get on good terms with my immediate chief once and for all. I need only imitate Playoust; I asked him slyly what he thought was happening. He needed no persuasion! He was fully aware of the fact that I had not been among his audience the day before, and ingenuously expressed his regret. De Valpic and I, he said, were the two best-read men in the company. He would so much like to exchange ideas with us! As for exchanging ideas, all I was aiming at was to get him to trot his out ... to get at him in that way. At my request he went to fetch a map of the whole of our eastern frontier. I led him on to various subjects which I wished to explore, without taking great pains about it: the composition of our army, the probable figure of our effectives, our system of fortified towns. He replied at length, furnishing information collected and classed without much sense of criticism. He placed the ideas he had gleaned from the special courses for officers, on the same level with those picked up in certain technical reviews, and a great number of commonplaces borrowed from the daily papers. But he fancied himself particular on the questions of strategy. The German scheme was done for! Everything was based, you see, on the complicity or, at all events, the passivity of Belgium. They had concentrated four army corps in their camps in advance, Trèves, Malmédy, Atles-Lager. They would have hurled them simultaneously on to the left bank of the Meuse, and they could have gone straight ahead across the flat country. In five days they would have been in the Scheldt, on the way to Valenciennes. They would have reached the valley of the Oise, and from there have gone on to Paris. And it might quite likely have succeeded!... He warmed to his subject. They came to grief. The Belgians have demolished forty thousand men, a whole army corps. The English have had time to land, and we to fall into line. And what do you say to our retort in Alsace the other day? We are getting the entire control of affairs into our hands. His forefinger indicated Mulhouse. Look, we're back there again and firmly based there, for good, believe me! It's obviously ours. Take Strassburg? No, not at once. Invest it perhaps, that's all. But push straight on across the Rhine. It's not so easy, but we should spare nothing in order to do that! Just think! Once past the Rhine all we should have to do would be to go straight ahead, and cut Germany in half. Separate the Northern Provinces under Prussia, from Bavaria, which is not nearly so antagonistic to us really, and the Russians, after having taken Cracow and Prague, will soon be shaking hands with us! He stopped talking and wiped his forehead. Gazing at his map he seemed to regret that it did not include the theatre of to-morrow's victories.