in the name of military necessity

Gerson was talking to him. They were in a different place. It might be they were already in the great Barnet dugout which was to be the new seat of government; a huge and monstrous cavern it was, at any rate; and they were discussing the next step that must be taken if the Empire, now so sorely stressed, so desperately threatened, was still to hack its way through to Victory. Overhead there rumbled and drummed an anti-aircraft barrage. Not a bit of it! It’s the sort of war these damned chemists and men of science have forced upon us. It’s a war made into a monster. Because someone failed to nip science in the bud a hundred years ago. They are doing their best to make war impossible. That’s their game. But so long as I live it shan’t be impossible whatever they do to it. I’ll see this blasted planet blown to bits first. I’ll see the last man stifled. What’s a world without war? The way to stop this infernal German bombing is to treat Berlin like a nest of wasps and KILL the place. And that’s what I want to set about doing now. But we can’t get the stuff in! Camelford and Woodcock procrastinate and obstruct. If you don’t deal with those two men in a day or so I shall deal with them myself, in the name of military necessity. I want to arrest them. Everything seemed to be passing into Gerson’s hands. The Lord Paramount had to remind himself more and more frequently that the logic of war demanded this predominance of Gerson. So long as the war lasted. He began where statecraft ceased, and when he had done statecraft would again take up what he had left of the problems entrusted to him.
The Lord Paramount had a persuasion that Camelford and Sir Bussy had been arrested already and had escaped. Some time had elapsed — imperceptibly. Yes, they had been arrested and they had got away. Sir Bussy had shown Camelford how to get away. Something obscured the Lord Paramount’s mind. Clouds floated before it. Voices that had nothing to do with the course of affairs sustained some kind of commentary. Events were no longer following one another with a proper amplitude of transition. He seemed to be passing in cinematograph fashion from scene to scene. A pursuit of Sir Bussy was in progress, Gerson was hunting him, but it was no longer clear where and how these events were unfolding.
Then it would seem that Sir Bussy had been discovered hiding in Norway. He had been kidnapped amazingly by Gerson’s agents and brought to Norfolk and shot. It was no time to be fussy about operations in neutral territory. And some rigorous yet indefinable necessity required that the Lord Paramount should go secretly at night to see Sir Bussy’s body. He was reminded of the heroic murder of Matteotti, of the still more heroic effacement of the Duc d’Enghien by Napoleon. It is necessary that one man should die for the people. This financial Ishmaelite had to be ended in his turn. The day had come for property also to come into the scheme of duty.