rs."

My God, and you want peace!

MINISTER OF WAR

[_Harshly._

Well, how do you like it?

CHIEF OF STAFF

He's backed down, he's backed down. All the world will be shouting
tomorrow how our King has backed down. _Christo!_ To accept defeat
before you've begun to fight!

[_He turns again to the map._

If this other plan should be frustrated by the enemy's navy, look, we
could land here and here and--

[_The door opens and the_ PRIME MINISTER _enters. He is a
stern, titanic figure in the sixties, sallow-skinned, gray-haired._

PRIME MINISTER

[_Standing in the doorway._

Good evening, gentlemen. Counting your battalions?

CHIEF OF STAFF

[_Absorbed._

And here, joining our armies at--

MINISTER OF WAR

Thank God, you're here. Where in sin have you been?

PRIME MINISTER

Home on my estates, saying good-bye to my family.

[_He smiles grimly, and with his cane makes a thrust in carte and
tierce._

MINISTER OF WAR

You think you are going to war?

PRIME MINISTER

I know.

MINISTER OF WAR

[_Taking up the paper the_ CHIEF OF STAFF _has let fall on the
desk._

Read that. It came from your office.

PRIME MINISTER

[_Takes it and begins to read._

Eh? The King? Mediation on his own hook?

[_With growing anger._

So? So? So?

[_He lets the paper flutter to the floor._

Very good. He can find a new Prime Minister. I resign.

CHIEF OF STAFF

[_Turning abruptly._

No, you don't!

MINISTER OF WAR

[_Hotly._

We stick together in this. You are not going to resign.

PRIME MINISTER

My good friends, I am going to resign.

[_He picks up the paper off the floor._

Give me your seat at the desk. On the back of this ignoble parley, my
resignation goes to him.

MINISTER OF WAR

You are the support of the army. We go to the dogs, if you leave us.

PRIME MINISTER

[_Sitting at the desk._

So? "The King suggests to the Foreign Office that these facts be put
before our Ambassadors abroad and, to pacify the public mind, be given
at once to the newspapers." He suggests. So do I suggest--something
different.

CHIEF OF STAFF

[_In front of the map again._

Three hundred thousand men here, turning the flank of a possible army
marching north with that ridge of mountains as a cover--If we can only
have the chance!

PRIME MINISTER

[_Studying the message, suddenly._

By Heaven! If--

MINISTER OF WAR

What is it? You look as if--