blockade of their coast-line is a too
depressingly scientific factor in the problem to be
welcomed by a general public which would not understand
how Yankee ships could win so many duels while the British
Navy won the war. Canadians are equally voluble about
the battles on Canadian soil, where Americans had decidedly
the worst of it. As a rule, Canadian writers have been
quite as controversial as Americans, and not any readier
to study their special subjects as parts of a greater
whole. The British Isles have never had an interested
public anxious to read about this remote, distasteful,
and subsidiary war; and books about it there have
consequently been very few.

The two chief authors who have appealed directly to the
readers of the mother country are William James and Sir
Charles Lucas. James was an industrious naval historian;
but he was quite as anti-American as the earlier American
writers were anti-British. Owing to this perverting bias
his two books, the _Naval_ and the _Military Occurrences
of the late War between Great Britain and the United
States_, are not to be relied upon. Their appendices,
however, give a great many documents which are of much
assistance in studying the real history of the war. James
wrote only a few years after the peace. Nearly a century
later Sir Charles Lucas wrote _The Canadian War of 1812_,
which is the work of a man whose life-long service in
the Colonial Office and intimate acquaintance with Canadian
history have both been turned to the best account. The
two chief Canadian authors are Colonel Cruikshank and
James Hannay. Colonel Cruikshank deserves the greatest
credit for being a real pioneer with his _Documentary
History of the Campaigns upon the Niagara Frontier_.
Hannay's _History of the War of 1812_ shows careful study
of the Canadian aspects of the operations; but its
generally sound arguments are weakened by its controversial
tone.

The four chief American authors to reckon with are,
Lossing, Upton, Roosevelt, and Mahan. They complement
rather than correspond with the four British authors.
The best known American work dealing with the military
campaigns is Lossing's _Field-Book of the War of 1812_.
It is an industrious compilation; but quite uncritical
and most misleading. General Upton's _Military Policy of
the United States_ incidentally pricks all the absurd
American militia bubbles with an incontrovertible array
of hard and pointed facts. _The Naval War of 1812_