leniency, which regarded failure to do the utmost with indulgence, if
without approval. In the stringent and awful emergencies of war too much
is at stake for such easy tolerance. Error of judgment is one thing;
error of conduct is something very different, and with a difference
usually recognizable. To style errors of conduct "errors of judgment"
denies, practically, that there are standards of action external to the
individual, and condones official misbehavior on the ground of personal
incompetency. Military standards rest on demonstrable facts of
experience, and should find their sanction in clear professional
opinion. So known, and so upheld, the unfortunate man who falls below
them, in a rank where failure may work serious harm, has only himself to
blame; for it is his business to reckon his own capacity before he
accepts the dignity and honors of a position in which the interests of
the nation are intrusted to his charge.

An uneasy consciousness of these truths, forced upon the Navy and the
Government by widespread shortcomings in many quarters--of which
Mathews's battle was only the most conspicuous instance--resulted in a
very serious modification of the Articles of War, after the peace. Up to
1748 the articles dealing with misconduct before the enemy, which had
been in force since the first half of the reign of Charles II., assigned
upon conviction the punishment of "death, or other punishment, as the
circumstances of the offence shall deserve and the Court-Martial shall
judge fit." After the experiences of this war, the last clause was
omitted. Discretion was taken away. Men were dissatisfied, whether
justly or not, with the use of their discretion made by Courts-Martial,
and deprived them of it. In the United States Navy, similarly, at the
beginning of the Civil War, the Government was in constant struggle with
Courts-Martial to impose sentences of severity adequate to the offence;
leaving the question of remission, or of indulgence, to the executive.
These facts are worthy of notice, for there is a facile popular
impression that Courts-Martial err on the side of stringency. The
writer, from a large experience of naval Courts, upon offenders of many
ranks, is able to affirm that it is not so. Marryat, in his day, midway
between the two periods here specified, makes the same statement, in
"Peter Simple." "There is an evident inclination towards the prisoner;
every allowance and every favor granted him, and n