us did the commander deem the attempted treachery. The English
have erected to the unfortunate officer a monument in Westminster Abbey.

The contemplated surrender of West Point to the enemy suggests the
demoralization which the war had already produced, and which was
deplored by no one more bitterly than by Washington himself. "If I were
called upon," he writes, "to draw a picture of the times and of men,
from what I have seen, heard, and in part know, I should in one word say
that idleness, dissipation, and extravagance seem to have laid fast hold
of most of them; that speculation, peculation, and an insatiable thirst
for riches seem to have got the better of every other consideration...;
that party disputes and personal quarrels are the great business of the
day; whilst the momentous concerns of an empire, an accumulating debt,
ruined finances, depreciated money, and want of credit ... are but
secondary considerations."

All war produces naturally and logically this demoralization, especially
in countries under a republican government. Profanity, drunkenness, and
general recklessness as to money matters were everywhere prevailing
vices; and this demoralization was, in the eyes of Washington, more to
be dreaded than any external dangers that had thus far caused alarm and
distress. "I have," wrote he, "seen without despondency even for a
moment, the hours which America has styled her gloomy ones; but I have
beheld no day since the commencement of hostilities that I have thought
her liberties were in such imminent danger as at present."

"He had faced," says Henry Cabot Lodge, in his interesting life of
Washington, "the enemy, the bleak winters, raw soldiers, and all the
difficulties of impecunious government, with a cheerful courage that
never failed. But the spectacle of wide-spread popular demoralization,
of selfish scramble for plunder, and of feeble administration at the
centre of government, weighed upon him heavily." And all this at the
period of the French alliance, which it was thought would soon end the
war. Indeed, hostilities were practically over at the North, and hence
the public lassitude. Nearly two years had passed without an
important battle.

When Clinton saw that no hope remained of subduing the Americans, the
British government should have made peace and recognized the
independence of the States. But the obstinacy of the king of England was
phenomenal, and his ministers were infatuated. They coul