have supped with the Macaronies, I have held up my head at the
Cocoa Tree, I have avoided the floor at hunt dinners, I have
drunk glass to glass with Tom Carteron. But never before have I
seen such noble consumers of good liquor as those four gentlemen
from beyond the Atlantic. They drank the strong red Cyprus as if
it had been spring-water. "The dust of your Italian roads takes
some cleansing, Mr. Townshend," was their only excuse, but in
truth none was needed. The wine seemed only to thaw their iron
decorum. Without any surcease of dignity they grew
communicative, and passed from lands to peoples and from peoples
to constitutions. Before we knew it we were embarked upon high
politics.

Naturally we did not differ on the war. Like me, they held it to
have been a grievous necessity. They had no bitterness against
England, only regrets for her blunders. Of his Majesty they
spoke with respect, of his Majesty's advisers with dignified
condemnation. They thought highly of our troops in America;
less highly of our generals.

"Look you, sir," said Mr. Galloway, "in a war such as we have
witnessed the Almighty is the only strategist. You fight against
the forces of Nature, and a newcomer little knows that the
success or failure of every operation he can conceive depends not
upon generalship, but upon the confirmation of a vast country.
Our generals, with this in mind and with fewer men, could make
all your schemes miscarry. Had the English soldiers not been of
such stubborn stuff, we should have been victors from the first.
Our leader was not General Washington but General America, and
his brigadiers were forests, swamps, lakes, rivers, and high