"It troubles me, too," said Grahame, looking out of the dark window at the watery clouds, ragged, uncanny, whirling one by one like tattered witches across the disk of a misshapen moon.
After a silence Jack relighted his half-burned cigar.
"Then it is invasion?" he asked.
"Yes--invasion."
"When?"
"Now."
"Good heavens! the very stones in the fields will rise up!"
"If the people did so too it might be to better purpose," observed Grahame, dryly. Then he emptied his glass, flicked the ashes from his cigar, and, sitting erect in his chair, said, "See here, Marche, you and I are accustomed to this sort of thing, we've seen campaigns and we have learned to judge dispassionately and, I think, fairly accurately; but, on my honour, I never before have seen the beginning of such a tempest--never! You say the very stones will rise up in the fields of France. You are right. For the fields will be ploughed with solid shot, and the shells will sow the earth with iron from the Rhine to the Loire. Good Lord, do these people know what is coming over the frontier?"
"Prussians," said Jack.
"Yes, Prussians and a few others--Würtembergers, Saxons, Bavarians, men from Baden, from Hesse, from the Schwarzwald--from Hamburg to the Tyrol they are coming in three armies. I saw the Spicheren, I saw Wissembourg--I have seen and I know."
Presently he opened a fresh bottle, and, with that whimsical smile and frank simplicity that won whom he chose to win, leaned towards Jack and began speaking as though the younger man were his peer in experience and age: "Shall I tell you what I saw across the Rhine? I saw the machinery at work--the little wheels and cogs turning and grinding and setting in motion that stupendous machine that Gneisenau patented and Von Moltke improved--the great Mobilization Machine! How this machine does its work it is not easy to realize unless one has actually watched its operation. I saw it--and what I saw left me divided between admiration and--well, damn it all!--sadness.
"You know, Marche, that there are three strata of fighting men in Germany--the regular army, the 'reserve,' and the Landwehr. It is a mistake into which many fall to believe that the reserve is the rear of the regular army. The war strength of a regiment is just double its peace strength, and the increment is the reserve. The blending of the two in time of war is complete; the medalled men of 1866 and of the Holstein campaign, called up from the reserve, are welded into the same ranks with the young soldiers who are serving their first period of three years. It is an utter mistake to think of the Prussian army or the Prussian reserves as a militia like yours or ours. The Prussian reserve man has three years active service with his colours to point back to. Have ours? The mobilization machine grinds its grinding in this wise. The whole country is divided into districts, in the central city of each of which are the headquarters of the army corps recruited from that district. Thence is sent forth the edict for mobilization to the towns, the villages, and the quiet country parishes. From the forge, from the harvest, from the store, from the school-room, blacksmiths, farmers, clerks, school-masters drop everything at an hour's notice.