The Obstinacy of Nicholas
The venerable quip that what is firmness in ourselves is obstinacy in our opponents is illustrated with a ludicrous explicitness in the whole tenor of German official utterance since the failure of the great drives. The obtuseness of the Allies is so abysmal (it is again and again complained in the Reichstag and through Wolff) that they are unable to see that Germany is the permanently triumphant victor. Whereas for Germany, whose cause even the neutrals judge to be lost, to hold out at the cost of untold blood and treasure is merely the manifestation of heaven-conferred German steadfastness. The Army into whose obstinate corporate head it is hardest to drive the idea of German military all-powerfulness is the Russian, of which retreating units, actually armed with staves against a superbly equipped (but innocent and wantonly attacked) foe, were so stupid as to forget how to be broken and demoralised.
And this long, imperturbable, verdamte Nicholas, who was declared on the highest German authority (and what higher?) to be annihilated twice, having turned a smashing tactical defeat into strategical victory, bobs up serenely in another and most inconvenient place. Absurd; particularly when “what I tell you three times is true.”... Neonapoleon didn’t remember Moscow. But he will.
JOSEPH THORP
“Why, I’ve killed you twice, and you dare to come back again.”