exaggerate all their mishaps, till it seems to you a miracle that
the hated party holds together for an hour.

"Our principle is not so much active demonstration - that we leave
to others - as passive embarrassment, to weaken and unnerve," said
the first man. "Wherever an organisation is crippled, wherever
confusion is thrown into any branch of any department, we gain a
step for those who take on the work; we are but the forerunners."
He was a German enthusiast, and editor of a newspaper, from whose
leading articles he quoted frequently.

"That cursed Empire makes so many blunders of her own that unless
we doubled the year's average I guess it wouldn't strike her
anything special had occurred," said the second man. "Are you
prepared to say that all our resources are equal to blowing off
the muzzle of a hundred-ton gun or spiking a ten-thousand-ton ship
on a plain rock in clear daylight? They can beat us at our own
game. Better join hands with the practical branches; we're in
funds now. Try a direct scare in a crowded street. They value
their greasy hides." He was the drag upon the wheel, and an
Americanised Irishman of the second generation, despising his own
race and hating the other. He had learned caution.

The third man drank his cocktail and spoke no word. He was the
strategist, but unfortunately his knowledge of life was limited.
He picked a letter from his breast-pocket and threw it across the
table. That epistle to the heathen contained some very concise
directions from the First Three in New York.
It said -