trained soldiers to lead
it, or staff officers to move and to administer its Divisions. It
must be admitted, I think, that General McClellan did all that a man
could do in the way of training this huge mass. But when the day came
for it to move forward, it was still unfit for an offensive campaign
against a regular army. To the practised eye of an able and
experienced soldier who accompanied McClellan, the Federal host was
an army only in name. He likened it to a giant lying prone upon the
earth, in appearance a Hercules, but wanting the bone, the muscle,
and the nervous organisation necessary to set the great frame in
motion. Even when the army was landed in the Peninsula, although the
process of training and organisation had been going on for over six
months, it was still a most unwieldy force. Fortunately for the
Union, the Confederate army, except as regards the superior leaders
and the cavalry, was hardly more efficient.

The United States, fully realising their need of a larger regular
army, are now on the point of increasing their existing force to
treble its present strength. Their troops, like our own, are raised
by voluntary enlistment for a short period of service with the
colours. England has always very great difficulty in filling the
ranks even with undeveloped youths. The United States obtain as many
full-grown men as they require, because they have the wisdom to pay
their men well, on a scale corresponding to the market rate of wages.
Here they are fortunate; but men are not everything, and I will still
draw the moral that a nation is more than blind when it deliberately
elects to entrust its defence to an army that is not as perfect as
training and discipline can make it, that is not led by practised
officers, staff and regimental, and that is not provided with a
powerful and efficient artillery. Overwhelming disaster is in store
for such nation if it be attacked by a large regular army; and when
it falls there will be none to pity. To hang the ministers who led
them astray, and who believed they knew better than any soldier how
the army should be administered, will be but poor consolation to an
angry and deluded people.

Let me now dwell briefly upon the second of the two great national
lessons taught by the Secession War. I shall say nothing here upon
civilian meddling with army organisation and with the selection of
officers for command, but I wish particularly to point out the result
of interfere