The Last Shot | Page 2

frontier, and the time the present.
Identify your combatants, some friends insist. Make the Italians fight

the Austrians or the French fight the Germans. As a spectator of wars,
under the spell of the growing cosmopolitanism that makes mankind
more and more akin, I could not see it in that way and be true to my
experience. My soldiers exist for my purpose only as human beings.
Race prejudices they have. Race prejudice is one of the factors of war.
But make the prejudice English, Italian, German, Russian, or French
and there is the temptation for reader and author to forget the story of
men as men and war as war. Even as in the long campaign in
Manchuria I would see a battle simply as an argument to the death
between little fellows in short khaki blouses and big fellows in long
gray coats, so I see the Browns and the Grays in "The Last Shot" take
the field.
But, though the scene is imaginary, the characters are from life. Their
actions and their sayings are those of men whom I have studied under
the stress of danger and sudden emergency. The delightful, boyish
confidence of Eugene Aronson has been at my elbow in a charge;
Feller I knew in the tropics as an outcast who shared my rations;
Dellarme's last words I heard from a dying captain; the philosophy of
Hugo Mallin is no less familiar than the bragging of Pilzer or the
transformation of Stransky, who whistled a wedding-march as he
pumped bullets at the enemy. In Lanstron we have a type of the modern
officer; in the elder Fragini a type of the soldier of another day. Each
marches in his place and plays his part in the sort of spectacle that I
have often watched. If there be no particular hero, then I can only say,
in confidence behind the scenes, that I have found no one man,
however heroic in the martial imagination of his country, to be a
particular hero in fact. Take, for example, our trembling little Peterkin,
who won the bronze cross for courage.
As for Marta and Minna, they speak for another element--for a good
half of the world's population that does not bear arms. In a siege once I
had glimpses of women under fire and I learned that bravery is not an
exclusively masculine trait. The game of solitaire? Well, it occurred in
a house in the midst of bursting shells. But the part that Marta plays? Is
it extravaganza? Not in war. The author sees it as something very real.

FREDERICK PALMER.

CONTENTS
I. A SPECK IN THE SKY II. TEN YEARS LATER III. OURS AND
THEIRS IV. THE DIVIDENDS OF POWER V. OFF TO THE
FRONTIER VI. THE SECOND PROPHECY VII. TIMES HAVE
CHANGED VIII. THANKS TO A BUMBLEBEE IX. A SUNDAY
MORNING CALL X. A LUNCHEON AT THE GALLANDS' XI.
MARTA HEARS FELLER'S STORY XII. A CRISIS WITHIN A
CRISIS XIII. BREAKING A PAPER-KNIFE XIV. IN PARTOW'S
OFFICE XV. CLOSE TO THE WHITE POSTS XVI. DELLARME'S
MEN GET A MASCOT XVII. A SUNDAY MORNING IN TOWN
XVIII. THE BAPTISM OF FIRE XIX. RECEIVING THE CHARGE
XX. MARTA'S FIRST GLIMPSE OF WAR XXI. SHE CHANGES
HER MIND XXII. FLOWERS FOR THE WOUNDED XIII.
STRANSKY FIGHTS ALONE XXIV. THE MAKING OF A HERO
XXV. THE TERRIBLE NIGHT XXVI. FELLER IS TEMPTED
XXVII. HAND TO HAND XXVIII. AN APPEAL TO PARTOW
XXIX. THROUGH THE VENEER XXX. MARTA MEETS HUGO
XXXI. UNTO CÆSAR XXXII. TEA ON THE VERANDA AGAIN
XXXIII. IN FELLER'S PLACE XXXIV. THREE VOICES XXXV.
MRS. GALLAND INSISTS XXXVI. MARKING TIME XXXVII.
THUMBS DOWN FOR BOUCHARD XXXVIII. HUNTING
GHOSTS XXXIX. A CHANGE OF PLAN XL. WITH FRACASSE'S
MEN XLI. WITH FELLER AND STRANSKY XLII. THE RAM
XLIII. JOVE'S ISOLATION XLIV. TURNING THE TABLES XLV.
THE RETREAT XLVI. THE LAST SHOT XLVII. THE PEACE OF
WISDOM

THE LAST SHOT

I

A SPECK IN THE SKY
It was Marta who first saw the speck in the sky. Her outcry and her
bound from her seat at the tea-table brought her mother and Colonel
Westerling after her onto the lawn, where they became motionless
figures, screening their eyes with their hands. The newest and most
wonderful thing in the world at the time was this speck appearing
above the irregular horizon of the Brown range, in view of a landscape
that centuries of civilization had fertilized and cultivated and formed.
At the base of the range ran a line of white stone posts, placed by
international commissions of surveyors to the nicety of an inch's
variation. In the very direction of the speck's flight a spur of foot-hills
extended into the plain that stretched away to the Gray range, distinct at
the distance of thirty miles in the bright afternoon