She herself must have seen how they were fatal to their own purpose.

Troubles were coming--battles behind the troubles.

All soldiers knew! They knew this too--the phrase of a young Lieutenant-Colonel lecturing at the Staff College.
"Battles are not won either by sheer force or pure right, but by the one or the other of those two Powers which has Discipline as its Chief of Staff." He was implying neither very tactfully nor clearly that he was on the way to dwindling into an undisciplined soldier.

But it did not matter in the least.

For Stella Croyle was not listening.