erday 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 reenforced by Johnston's; it was impossible
not to see that it could be so reenforced, 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;