Page:Arthur Stranger--The Stranger.djvu/13

Rh an assumption of coolheadedness to which he could lay faint claim. "It might have been different, if my boy had given up his life at white heat, in one of those big pushes. It wouldn't have seemed so hard, if he'd gone out giving those Huns what they deserved. But the way he did die seems so meaningless, so accidental, so damnably unnecessary, that I can't help getting bitter, now and then, when I fall to thinking about it."

"Then how did he die?"

"Do you happen to know anything about warfare?"

"I have known warfare, in my time," admitted the other, as though speaking to himself, and only to himself.

"Well, this modern kind of campaigning is a good deal different to the brand of fighting of even twenty years ago. You see, when you win a battle nowadays you can't call it actually won until the moppers-up have gone over the territory and cleaned it up, rooted out the hidden snipers and taken care of the mud-crawlers who cut loose and stab in the dark. It means consolidating your position. It's really getting your triumph organized so it can't turn turtle into a defeat. And it's something that it doesn't pay to overlook."

"I think I understand," acknowledged his grave-eyed companion.