eir
front, it is just possible that the "veterans" might have some fresh
ideas as to the realities of a "charge in line."

Reading these bellicose articles, you are perpetually reminded of the
favorite national game of "Poker." In this, a player holding a very bad
hand against a good one, may possibly "bluff" his adversary down, and
win the stakes, if he only has confidence enough to go on piling up the
money, so as to make his own weakness appear strength. That audacity
answers often happily enough, especially with the timid and
inexperienced, but the professional gamblers tell you mournfully that
they sometimes meet an opponent with equal nerve and a longer purse;
then comes the fatal moment when the cards must be shown, and then--_le
quart d'heure de Rabelais_. I think, if ever Britannia is forced to
"see" Federalia's "hand," the world that looks on will find that the
latter has been "bluffing" to hide weakness.

Nevertheless, I am far from undervaluing the actual strength of the
northern land armies. They are composed of the most uncouth and
heterogeneous materials; but they work well enough, after their own
rough fashion, and certainly recover surprisingly fast from temporary
discomfiture; it is difficult to believe that the troops who met Lee so
gallantly at Gettysburg were the same who recrossed the Rappahannock in
sullen despondency, after Chancellorsville. But the foreign element in
the Federal forces must soon grow dangerously strong; it should never be
forgotten that the foreigners, attracted by enormous bounty, even if
they be of Anglo-Saxon blood, can be but mercenaries, after all; and, in
history, the Swiss almost monopolize the glory of mercenary fidelity.
Such subsidies can only be relied on when pay is prompt and work plenty:
irregularity or inaction will soon breed discontent, followed by some
such revolt as menaced the existence of Carthage.

These are some of the causes which, as it seems to me, even now
neutralize, to a great extent, the really vast resources of the North,
and will some day imperil her very existence as a nation--united in her
present form. Now, as to the event of the struggle.

I believe amalgamation, or any other terms than absolute subjugation of
the South--to be maintained hereafter by armies of occupancy--simply
impracticable. This--not only on the grounds of political and social
antagonism before alluded to; but because this contest has been waged
after a fashion almost un