`` That old sop of comfort has been served up too often already when reverses came , '' retorted Gertrude . `` It has lost its power to charm . '' `` Was there ever a battle like this in the world before ? '' said Mr. Meredith , one evening in mid-April . `` It 's such a titanic thing we ca n't grasp it , '' said the doctor . `` What were the scraps of a few Homeric handfuls compared to this ? The whole Trojan war might be fought around a Verdun fort and a newspaper correspondent would give it no more than a sentence . I am not in the confidence of the occult powers '' -- the doctor threw Gertrude a twinkle -- `` but I have a hunch that the fate of the whole war hangs on the issue of Verdun . As Susan and Joffre say , it has no real military significance ; but it has the tremendous significance of an Idea . If Germany wins there she will win the war . If she loses , the tide will set against her . '' `` Lose she will , '' said Mr. Meredith : emphatically . `` The Idea can not be conquered . France is certainly very wonderful . It seems to me that in her I see the white form of civilization making a determined stand against the black powers of barbarism . I think our whole world realizes this and that is why we all await the issue so breathlessly . It is n't merely the question of a few forts changing hands or a few miles of blood-soaked ground lost and won . '' `` I wonder , '' said Gertrude dreamily , `` if some great blessing , great enough for the price , will be the meed of all our pain ? Is the agony in which the world is shuddering the birth-pang of some wondrous new era ? Or is it merely a futile struggle of ants In the gleam of a million million of suns ?
We think very lightly , Mr. Meredith , XXXXX a calamity which destroys an ant-hill and half its inhabitants .
As against around before for in of on than to