"We shall have a new general, Jones; General McClellan is ordered to
report immediately in person to the war department."
"Why a new general? McClellan is well enough, I suppose; but what has
McDowell done to deserve this?"
"He has failed. Failure in war is unpardonable; every general that fails
finds it so; McClellan may find it so."
"You are not much of a comforter, Doctor."
"The North does not need false comforters; she needs to look things
squarely in the face. Mind you, I did not say that McClellan will fail.
I think, however, that there will be many failures, and much injustice
done to those who fail. In war injustice is easily tolerated--any
injustice that will bring success; success is demanded--not justice.
Wholesale murder was committed yesterday and brought failure; wholesale
murder that brings success is what is demanded by this
superstitious people."
"Why do you say superstitious?"
"A nation at war believes in luck; if it has not good luck, it changes;
it is like the gambler who bets high when he thinks he has what he calls
a run in his favor. If the cards go against him, he changes his policy,
and very frequently changes just as the cards change to suit his former
play. You are now changing to McClellan, simply because McDowell has had
bad luck and McClellan good luck. I do not know that McClellan's good
luck will continue. War and cards are alike, and they are unlike."
"How alike and unlike?"
"Games of chance, so called, lose everything like chance in the long
run; they equalize 'chances' and nobody wins. War also destroys chance,
and nobody wins; both sides lose, only one side loses less than the
other. In games, the result of one play cannot be foretold; in war, the
result of one battle cannot be foretold. In games and in war the general
result can be foretold; in the one there will be a balance and in the
other there will be destruction. Even the winner in war is ruined
morally, just as is the gambler."
"And can you foretell the result of this war?"
"Conditionally."
"How conditionally?"
"If the North is in earnest, or becomes in earnest, and her people
become determined, there is no mystery in a prediction of her nominal
success; still, she will suffer for her crime. She must suffer largely,
just as she is suffering to-day in a small way for the crime of
yesterday."
"It is terrible to think of yesterday's useless sacrifice."
"Not useless, Jones, regarded in its relation to this war, but certainly
useless in relation to civilization. Bull Bun will prove salutary for
your cause, or I woefully mistake. Nations that go to war must learn
from misfortune."
"But, then, does not the misfortune of yesterday justify a change in
generals?"
"Not unless the misfortune was caused by your bad generalship, and that
is not shown--at least, so far as McDowell is concerned. The advance
should not have been made, but he was ordered to make it. We now know
that Beauregard's army was reënforced by Johnston's; it was impossible
not to see that it could be so reënforced, as the Confederates had the
interior line. The real fault in the campaign is not McDowell's. His
plan was scientific; his battle was better planned than was his
antagonist's; he outgeneralled Beauregard clearly, and failed only
because of a fact that is going to be impressed frequently upon the
Northern mind in this war; that fact is that the Southern troops do not
know when they are beaten. McDowell defeated Beauregard, so far as those
two are concerned; but his army failed, and he must be sacrificed; the
North ought, however, to sacrifice the army."
"What do you mean by that, Doctor?"
"I mean that war is wrong; it is always so. It is essentially unjust and
narrow. You have given up your power to be just; you cannot do what you
know to be just. You act under compulsion, having yielded your freedom.
A losing general is sacrificed, regardless of his real merit."
"Was it so in Washington's case?"
"Washington's first efforts were successful; had he been, defeated at
Boston, he would have been superseded--unless, indeed, the colonies had
given up the struggle."
"And independence would have been lost?"
"No; I do not say that. The world had need of American independence."
For half an hour we sat thus talking, the Doctor doing the most of it,
and giving full rein to his philosophically impersonal views of the
immediate questions involved in the national struggle. He rose at last,
and left me thinking of his strange personality and wondering why,
holding such views, be should throw his energies into either side.
He returned presently, bringing me a letter from my father. He waited as
I opened it, and when I asked leave to read it, he said for answer, as
if still thinking of our conversation:--
"Jones, my boy, there is a future for you. I can imagine circumstances
in which your peculiar powers of memory would accomplish more genuine
good than could a thousand bayonets; good night."
Before I went to bed I had written my father a long letter. Then, I lay
down, oppressed with thought.