the staff and commissariat would have given them mobility, and 60,000 or 70,000 men, moving on Richmond directly Sumter fell, with the speed and certainty which organisation gives, would have marched from victory to victory.  Their 750,000 enemies would never have had time to arm, to assemble, to organise, to create an army, to train a staff, or to arrange for their supplies.  Each gathering of volunteers would have been swept away before it had attained consistency, and Virginia, at least, must have been conquered in the first few months.

And matters would have been no different if the army corps had been directed against the Union.  In the Northern States there were over 2,000,000 men who were liable for service; and yet the Union States, notwithstanding their superior resources, were just as vulnerable as the Confederacy.  Numbers, even if they amount to millions, are useless, and worse than useless, without training and organisation; the more men that are collected on the battle-field, the more crushing and far-reaching their defeat.  Nor can the theory be sustained that a small army, invading a rich and populous country, would be “stung to death” by the numbers of its foes, even if they dared not oppose it in the open field.  Of what avail were the stupendous efforts of the French Republic in 1870 and 1871?  Enormous armies were raised and equipped; the ranks were filled with brave men; the generals were not unskilful; and yet time after time they were defeated by the far inferior forces of their seasoned enemies.  Even in America itself, on two occasions, at Sharpsburg in 1862, and at Gettysburg in 1863, it was admitted by the North that the Southerners were “within a stone’s throw of independence.”  And yet hundreds of thousands of able-bodied men had not yet joined the Federal armies.  Nor can Spain be quoted as an instance of an unconquerable nation.  Throughout the war with Napoleon the English armies, not only that under Wellington, but those at Cadiz, Tarifa, and Gibraltar, afforded solid rallying-points for the defeated Spaniards, and by a succession of victories inspired the whole Peninsula with hope and courage.

The patriot with a rifle may be equal, or even superior, man for man, to the professional soldier; but even patriots must be fed, and to win victories they must be able to manoeuvre, and to manoeuvre they must have leaders.  If it could remain stationary, protected by earthworks, and supplied by railways, with which the enemy did not interfere, a host of hastily raised levies, if armed and equipped, might hold its own against even a regular army.  But against troops which can manoeuvre earthworks are useless, as the history of Sherman’s brilliant operations in 1864 conclusively shows.  To win battles and to protect their country armies must be capable of counter-manoeuvre, and it is when troops are set in motion that the real difficulty of supplying them begins.

If it is nothing else, the War of Secession, with its awful expenditure of blood and treasure, is a most startling object-lesson in National Insurance.