These were the positions charted on the map of political unity
by an insect in Washington in the spring of 1903; and they seemed
to him fixed. Russia held Europe and America in her grasp, and
Cassini held Hay in his. The Siberian Railway offered checkmate
to all possible opposition. Japan must make the best terms she
could; England must go on receding; America and Germany would
look on at the avalanche. The wall of Russian inertia that barred
Europe across the Baltic, would bar America across the Pacific;
and Hay's policy of the open door would infallibly fail.
Thus the game seemed lost, in spite of the Kaiser's brilliant
stroke, and the movement of Russia eastward must drag Germany
after it by its mere mass. To the humble student, the loss of
Hay's game affected only Hay; for himself, the game -- not the
stakes -- was the chief interest; and though want of habit made
him object to read his newspapers blackened -- since he liked to
blacken them himself -- he was in any case condemned to pass but
a short space of time either in Siberia or in Paris, and could
balance his endless columns of calculation equally in either
place. The figures, not the facts, concerned his chart, and he
mused deeply over his next equation. The Atlantic would have to
deal with a vast continental mass of inert motion, like a
glacier, which moved, and consciously moved, by mechanical
gravitation alone.
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