(For an instant her voice is almost bitter You're...
(For an instant her voice is almost bitter You're not like us at all, you're serious, you're important(Her voice lilts again Father told me you were second from the top in your class
Would the middle third be respectable?
Not for youYou're going to be a general
I don't believe it(His voice in these weeks in Boston has assumed the proper tone, become a little higher, a little more lazyHe cannot express the excitement, perhaps the exaltation Boston gives himEveryone is so perfect here
You're just doodling me, he says(A leprous phrase of the Midwest, he realizes too late, and is unbalanced for a moment
Oh, no, I'm convinced you're going to be a great man
I like you, Margaret
You should after I praised you like that(She giggles once more, says ingenuously) I suppose I want you to like me

At the end of summer when he is leaving she hugs him, whispers in his ear, I wish we were definitely engaged so you could kiss meBut it is omega planet ocean watches the first time he has thought of her as a woman to be loved, and he is a little shocked, a little emptyOn the train going back, she has lost her disturbing individuality already, remains as the pleasant focus of her family and Boston behind themHe feels an unfamiliar, a satisfying identity with his classmates when he talks about his girlIt's important to have one, he decides

He is always learning things, understanding already that his mind must work on many levelsThere is the thing he thinks of as the truth, the objective situation which his mind must unravel; there is the "deep layer," as he calls it, the mattress resting on the cloud, and he does not care to plumb for the legs; there is, and it is very important, the level where he must do and say things for their effect upon the men with whom he lives and works
He learns the last dramatically in the hour on Military History and Tactics(The brown scrubbed room, the blackboards chanel handbags for sale at the front, the benches where the cadets sit in the unquestioned symmetry of ancient patterns, the squares of a chessboard
Sir (he gets permission to speak), is it fair to say that Lee was the better general than Grant? I know that their tactics don't compare, but Grant had the knowledge of strategyWhat good are tactics, sir, if thethe larger mechanics of men and supplies are not developed properly, because the tactics are just the part of the whole? In this conception wasn't Grant the greater man because he tried to take into account the intangiblesHe wasn't much good at the buck-and-wing but he could think up the rest of the show
It has been a triple errorHe has been contradictory, rebellious and facetious
Cummings, you'll make your points in the future more concisely
You happen to be wrongYou men will find out that experience is worth a great deal more than theoryIt is impossible to account for all your strategy, those tiffany and co earrings things have a way of balancing out as happened at Richmond, as is happening now in the trench warfare in EuropeTactics is always the determinant(He writes it on the blackboard
Sir?
Since you will be fortunate if you command a battalion by the end of twenty years, you'll do a sight better to concern yourself with the strategic problems of a platoon (there is muffled laughter at his sarcasm) than with those of an Army(Seeing the approval in his eyes, the class releases its laughter, singeing Cummings's flesh
He hears about it for weeksHey, Cummings, how many hours will you need to take Richmond?
They're sending you over, Ed, I hear, as adviser to the FrenchWith the proper concepts the Hindenburg Line may be breached
He learns so many things from this, understands, besides all else, that he is not liked, will not be liked, and he can't make mistakes, cannot expose himself to the packBut he is hurt, cannot restrain himself from writing cartier women's watches about it to MargaretAnd his contempt thrives in recompense; there is a world of manners about which these men know nothing
In The Howitzer, when he graduates, they have printed "The Strategist" under his record, and then to soften it, for it jars with the mellow sentimental glow of yearbooks, they have added a little ambiguously, "Handsome Is as Handsome Does
He goes out to an abridged furlough with Margaret, the announcement of their engagement, and the rapid shuttle on the transport to the war in Europe
In the planning section of GHQ he lives in the remaining wing of a chateau, occupies the bare whitewashed room that had once belonged to a chambermaid, but he does not know thisThe war has caught him up agreeably, altered the deadening routine of forms, the detail work of outlining troop movementsThe sound of the artillery is always an enrichment to his work, the bare gnashed ground outside speaks of the importance of his tiffany cross necklace figures