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“The people will not like it,” Orden said. “Always the people! The people are disarmed. The people have no say.”
war is treachery and hatred, the muddling of incompetent generals, the torture and killing and sickness and tiredness, until at last it is over and nothing has changed except for new weariness and new hatreds.
“Defeat is a momentary thing. A defeat doesn’t last. We were defeated and now we attack. Defeat means nothing.
“That is a great mystery,” said Doctor Winter. “That is a mystery that has disturbed rulers all over the world—how the people know. It disturbs the invaders now, I am told, how news runs through censorships, how the truth of things fights free of control. It is a great mystery.”
Don’t you know you will have to kill all of us or we in time will kill all of you? You destroyed the law when you came in, and a new law took its place. Don’t you know that?”
Your private anger was the beginning of a public anger.
The people of the conquered country settled in a slow, silent, waiting revenge. The men who had been traitors, who had helped the invaders—and many of them believed it was for a better state and an ideal way of life—found that the control they took was insecure, that the people they had known looked at them coldly and never spoke.
The cold hatred grew with the winter, the silent, sullen hatred, the waiting hatred.
“Conquered and we’re afraid; conquered and we’re surrounded.”
Our people are invaded, but I don’t think they’re conquered.”
They think that just because they have only one leader and one head, we are all like that. They know that ten heads lopped off will destroy them, but we are a free people; we have as many heads as we have people, and in a time of need leaders pop up among us like mushrooms.”
I am a little man and this is a little town, but there must be a spark in little men that can burst into flame.
I have no choice of living or dying, you see, sir, but—I do have a choice of how I do it. If I tell them not to fight, they will be sorry, but they will fight. If I tell them to fight, they will be glad, and I who am not a very brave man will have made them a little braver.”
Free men cannot start a war, but once it is started, they can fight on in defeat. Herd men, followers of a leader, cannot do that, and so it is always the herd men who win battles and the free men who win wars. You will find that is so, sir.”
