“ These damned politicians—they invent a cry—and they wait to see if the public will take it up. And if it won’t, they drop it. And if it will, they make a mountain of it, if it’s only an old flower-pot.”
“ They do,” yelled Somers.
They stood close side by side, like two mariners in a storm, amid the breathing spume of the foreshore, while darkness slowly sank. Right at the tip of the flat, low rocks they stood, like pilots.
“ It’s no good,” barked Jack, with his hands in his pockets.
“ Not a bit.”
“ If you’re an officer, you study what is best, for the cause and for the men. You study your men. But you don’t ask them what to do. If you do you’re a wash-out.”
“ Quite.”
“ And that’s where it is in politics. You see the papers howling and blubbering for a statesm
