“Wouldn’t they fight?”
“Oh, sure, they’d fight. They’d fight as individuals, and they would do quite a bit of slaughter until some flatface caught them off guard and winged them. ”
“I wonder if we can depend on them as sources of information. ”
“That’s another matter. Most of the road kids won’t have any idea that they are being used to obtain military information. I’ll handpick not over a dozen to act as reporters to me, and I won’t tell them anything they don’t have to know.”
Any way he looked at it, simple, straightforward military use of the new weapons was not expedient. Brutal frontal attack was for the commander who had men to expend. General U. S. Grant could afford to say, “I will fight it out on this line if it takes all summer,” because he could lose three men to the enemy’s one and still win. Those tactics were not for the commander who could not afford to lose any men. For him it must be deception, misdirection — feint and slash and run away — “and live to fight another day.” The nursery rhyme finished itself in his mind. That was it. It had to be something totally unexpected, something that the PanAsians would not realize was warfare until they were overwhelmed by it.
It would have to be something like the “fifth columns” that destroyed the European democracies from within in the tragic days that led to the final blackout of European civilization. But this would not be a fifth column of traitors, bent on paralyzing a free country; but the antithesis of that, a sixth column of patriots whose privilege it would be to destroy the morale of invaders, make them afraid, unsure of themselves.
And misdirection was the key to it, the art of fooling!
Ardmore felt a little better when he had reached that conclusion. It was something he could understand, a job suited to an advertising man. He had been trying to crack it as a military problem, but he was not a field marshal and it had been silly of him to try to make a noise like one. His mind did not work that way. This was primarily a job in publicity, a matter of mob psychology. A former boss of his, under whom he had learned the racket, used to tell him, “I can sell dead cats to the board of health with a proper budget and a free hand.”
Well, he had a free hand, all right, and the budget was no problem. Of course, he could not use the newspapers and the old channels of advertising, but there would be a way. The problem now was to figure out the weak points of the PanAsians and decide how Calhoun’s little gadgets could be used to play on those weak points until the PanAsians were sick of the whole deal and anxious to go home.
He did not have a plan as yet. When a man is at a loss for a course of action, he usually calls for a conference. Ardmore did.
He sketched out to them the situation up to date, including all that Thomas had learned and all that had come in by television through the conquerors’ “educational” broadcasts. Then he discussed the powers that were made available to them by the research staff, and the various obvious ways in which they could be applied as military weapons, emphasizing the personnel necessary to use each type of weapon effectively. Having done so, he asked for suggestions.
“Do I understand, Major,” Calhoun began, “that after rather pointedly telling us that you would make all military decisions you are now asking us to make up your mind for you?”
“Not at all, Colonel. I have still the responsibility for any decision, but this is a new sort of military situation. A suggestion from any source may prove valuable. I don’t flatter myself that I have a monopoly on common sense, nor on originality. I would like for every one of us to tackle this problem and let the others criticize it. ”
“Do you yourself have any plan to offer us?”
“I am reserving my opinions until the rest of you have spoken.”