Who Goes There?. B. K. Benson
without resentment the attack on Sumter?"
"Yes, endure everything rather than commit a worse crime than that you resist."
Here Lydia, reappeared, charming in a simple white dress without ornament. "Good-by, Father," she said; "Mr. Berwick, I must bid you good night."
"Yes, you are on duty to-night," said her father. "Jones, you must know that Lydia is a volunteer also; she attaches herself to the Commission, and insists on serving the sick and wounded. She is on duty to-night at the College Hospital. I think she will have her hands full."
"Why, you will see Willis; will you be in his ward?" I asked, looking my admiration.
"I don't know that I am in his ward," she replied, "but I can easily see him if you wish."
"Then please be so good as to tell him that I shall come to see him--to-morrow, if possible."
Lydia started off down the hill.
"She will find a buggy at our stable-camp," said Dr. Khayme; "it is but a short distance down there."
The Doctor smoked. I thought of many things. His view of war was not new, by any means; of course, in the abstract he was right: war is wrong, and that which is wrong is unwise; but how to prevent war? A nation that will not preserve itself, how can it exist? I could not doubt that secession is destruction. If the Union should now or ever see itself broken up, then farewell to American liberties; farewell to the hopes of peoples against despotism. To refuse war, to tamely allow the South to withdraw and set up a government of her own, would be but the beginning of the end; at the first grievance California, Massachusetts, any State, could and would become independent. No; war must come; the Union must be preserved; the nation was at the forks of the road; for my part, I could not hesitate; we must take one road or the other; war was forced upon us. But why reason thus, as though we still had choice? War already exists; we must make the best of it; we are down to-day, but Bull Run is not the whole of the war; one field is lost, but all is not lost.
"Doctor," I asked, "why do you say that yesterday will prove to be the crisis of the war?"
"Because," he answered, "yesterday's lesson was well taught and will be well learned; it was a rude lesson, but it will prove a wholesome one. Your government now knows the enormous work it has to do. We shall now see preparation commensurate with the greatness of the work. Three months' volunteers are already a thing of the past. This war might have been avoided; all war might be avoided; but this war has not been avoided; America will be at war for years to come."
I was silent.
"We shall have a new general, Jones; General McClellan is ordered to report immediately in person to the war department."
"Why a new general? McClellan is well enough, I suppose; but what has McDowell done to deserve this?"
"He has failed. Failure in war is unpardonable; every general that fails finds it so; McClellan may find it so."
"You are not much of a comforter, Doctor."
"The North does not need false comforters; she needs to look things squarely in the face. Mind you, I did not say that McClellan will fail. I think, however, that there will be many failures, and much injustice done to those who fail. In war injustice is easily tolerated--any injustice that will bring success; success is demanded--not justice. Wholesale murder was committed yesterday 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 reënforced by Johnston's; it was impossible not to see that it could be so reënforced, 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; he outgeneralled Beauregard clearly, and failed only because of a fact that is going to be impressed frequently upon the Northern mind in this war; that fact is that the Southern troops do not know when they are beaten. McDowell defeated Beauregard, so far as those two are concerned; but his army failed, and he must be sacrificed; the North ought, however, to sacrifice the army."
"What do you mean by that, Doctor?"
"I mean that war is wrong; it is always so. It is essentially unjust and narrow. You have given up your power to be just; you cannot do what you know to be just. You act under compulsion, having yielded your freedom. A losing general is sacrificed, regardless of his real merit."
"Was it so in Washington's case?"
"Washington's first efforts were successful; had he been, defeated at Boston, he would have been superseded--unless, indeed, the colonies had given up the struggle."
"And independence would have been lost?"
"No; I do not say that. The world had need of American independence."
For half an hour we sat thus talking, the Doctor doing the most of it, and giving full rein to his philosophically impersonal views of the immediate questions involved in the national struggle. He rose at last, and left me thinking of his strange personality and wondering why, holding such views, be should throw his energies into either side.
He returned presently, bringing me a letter from my father. He waited as I opened it, and when I asked leave to read it, he said for answer, as if still thinking of our conversation:--
"Jones, my boy, there is a future for you. I can imagine circumstances in which your peculiar powers of memory would accomplish more genuine good than could a thousand bayonets; good night."
Before I went to bed I had written my father a long letter. Then, I lay down, oppressed with thought.
VI
THE USES OF INFIRMITY