ucceed normally, he
has not the decency to live quietly in the cheaper suburbs of Berlin and
let other people do it. Flourish they must, HINDENBURG and his lot, and so
the world is at war to keep their end up.

Now, says McGregor, it is undoubtedly sinful to fight, but he can't help
half forgiving those whose desire to have a round is such that they must
needs cause the bothers. But do I suppose that HINDENBURG ever wanted to
fight, ever meant or ever means to do it? Not he; and that is why the War
goes on and on and on. We've got to work through all the other Germans,
says he, before we'll get to their militarists, who are all alive and doing
nicely, thank you, behind. When we are getting near the throat of the first
of them then the War will end.

McGregor cannot bring himself to detest all the Bosches. After all, he
says, they do stick it out, and their very stupidity makes some call on his
generosity. But HINDENBURG, he is convinced, never stuck anything out,
except snubs from his competitor, WILHELM, in the course of his uprising
career; he makes no call on anybody's generosity, taking everything he
wants, including (says McGregor) the best cigars. Without ever having
studied them closely, McGregor has the most precise ideas of HINDENBURG'S
daily life and habits. He is quite sure he smokes all day the most
expensive cigars, without paying for them or removing the bands. He rose,
says McGregor, by artifice combined with ostentation. While his good
soldiers were studying their musketry, he was practising ferocious
expressions before his glass. If he ever did get mixed up in a real battle
(which McGregor doubts) he was undoubtedly last in and first out. However
it may appear in print, his military career would not bear close scrutiny;
for that reason McGregor does not propose to scrutinise it. And as for his
indomitable will, he sees nothing to admire in the man's persistence,
since, when he stops persisting, he'll become ungummed and, at the best,
forgotten.

So said McGregor, and when I besought him to come to the point, he said
he'd dealt with it, and if I had any sympathy left for HINDENBURG or his
line I was no better than a slave-driving, sit-at-home-and-push-others-
over-the-parapet Prussian militarist myself. As for the map, it didn't
matter in the least where HINDENBURG took his old line to, since wherever
in Europe it endeavoured to conceal itself his own little line would scent
it out and follow it. And i