ability of our men to keep the ground
they had won at Wilson's Creek, in Missouri, (August 10,) were the
legitimate consequences of action over which the mass of the soldiers
could have no control. It is due to the soldiers to say this, for it
is the truth, as every man knows who has observed the course of the
contest, and who has seen it proceed from a political squabble to the
dimensions of a mighty war, the end of which mortal vision cannot
foresee.

It would be no difficult task to add a hundred instances to those we
have mentioned of the occurrence of panics in European armies; but it
is not necessary to pursue the subject farther. Nothing is better known
than that almost every eminent commander has suffered from panic terror
having taken control of the minds of his men, and nothing is more unjust
than to speak of the American panic of the 21st of July as if it were
something quite out of the common way of war. True, its origin has never
been fully explained; but in this point it only resembles most other
panics, the causes of which never have been explained and never will be.
It is characteristic of a panic that its occurrence cannot be accounted
for; and therefore it was that the ancients attributed it to the direct
interposition of a god, as arising from some cause quite beyond human
comprehension. If panics could be clearly explained, some device might
be hit upon, perhaps, for their prevention. But we see that they
occurred at the very dawn of history, that they have happened repeatedly
for five-and-twenty centuries, and that they are as common now in the
nineteenth Christian century as they were in those days when Pan was a
god. "Great Pan is _not_ dead," but sends armies to pot now as readily
as he did when there were hoplites and peltasts on earth. We can console
ourselves, though the consolation be but a poor one, with the reflection
that all military peoples have suffered from the same cause that has
brought so much mortification and so great loss immediately home to us.
Our panic is the greatest that ever was known only because it is the
latest one that has happened, and because it has happened to ourselves.
It is idle, and even laughable, to attempt to argue it out of sight. We
should admit its occurrence as freely as it is asserted by the bitterest
and most unfair of our critics; and we should recognize the truth of
what has been well said on the subject, that the only possible answer to
the attacks th