Page:The four horsemen of the Apocalypse - (Los cuatro jinetes de Apocalipsis) (IA cu31924014386738).djvu/158

 What had they to fear?… The enemy most to be reckoned with was France, incapable of resisting the enervating moral influences, the sufferings, the strain and the privations of war;—a nation physically debilitated and so poisoned by revolutionary spirit that it had laid aside the use of arms through an exaggerated love of comfort.

"Our generals," he announced, "are going to leave her in such a state that she will never again cross our path."

There was Russia, too, to consider, but her amorphous masses were slow to assemble and unwieldy to move. The Executive Staff of Berlin had timed everything by measure for crushing France in four weeks, and would then lead its enormous forces against the Russian empire before it could begin action.

"We shall finish with the bear after killing the cock," affirmed the professor triumphantly.

But guessing at some objection from his cousin, he hastened on—"I know what you are going to tell me. There remains another enemy, one that has not yet leaped into the lists but which all the Germans are waiting for. That one inspires more hatred than all the others put together, because it is of our blood, because it is a traitor to the race.… Ah, how we loathe it!"

And in the tone in which these words were uttered throbbed an expression of hatred and a thirst for vengeance which astonished both listeners.

"Even though England attack us," continued Hartrott, "we shall conquer, notwithstanding. This adversary is not more terrible than the others. For the past century she has ruled the world. Upon the fall of Napoleon she seized the continental hegemony, and will fight to keep it. But what does her energy amount to?… As our Bernhardi says, the English people are merely a nation