2 paper. But war is something more than a sum in arithmetic. A campaign cannot be decided by the rule of three. No finite power can control every contingency, and have all the chances in its favor. War means alternate success and defeat, alternate hope and disappointment, great suffering in the field, many vacant chairs at many firesides, immense expenditures with little apparent result, “ the best-laid schemes foiled by a thousand unexpected contingencies, lamentable indecision in the cabinet, glaring blunders in the field, stagnation of industry, and heavy taxation. “War is a game, which, were the nations wise, Kings would not play at.” But nations are not always wise, and war often becomes a necessity. When, then, the necessity arises, it should be met manfully. The question once deliberately decided that peace is no longer consistent with national honor or national safety, the dread alternative must be accepted With all its hazards and all its horrors. To organize only in anticipation of certain and speedy success, to despise and underrate the enemy, to inquire with how small an army and how limited an expenditure the war can be carried on, is as unstatesmanlike as it is in flat defiance of all historical teaching. But if we carry our folly still farther in the same direction; if we fail to take into grave account the most obvious and inevitable incidents of actual warfare ; if in our overweening confidence we neglect discipline, underrate the prime importance of promptness and decision in action, certainty and celerity in movement, and energy and activity in pursuit; if, in a word, we expect that the defences of the enemy are to fall into our hands by means as unwarlike as those that decided the fate of Jericho, or dream that because our cause is just every precedent in history, and every principle in human nature will be overruled in our favor—then we deserve to be outgeneralled, and are fortunate, if we escape final and disastrous defeat. Now, has not this been precisely our cardinal and capital error, and are wre not to-day suffering its natural consequences ? To the blind and unreasoning confidence with which we began this war has succeeded a reaction running into the very opposite
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