al of truth in this opinion. The whole expedition was
rash in the extreme. When Washington left Will's Creek he was aware
that he was going to meet a force of a thousand men with only a
hundred and fifty raw recruits at his back. In the same spirit he
pushed on; and after the Jumonville affair, although he knew that the
wilderness about him was swarming with enemies, he still struggled
forward. When forced to retreat he made a stand at the Meadows and
offered battle in the open to his more numerous and more prudent
foes, for he was one of those men who by nature regard courage as a
substitute for everything, and who have a contempt for hostile odds.
He was ready to meet any number of French and Indians with cheerful
confidence and with real pleasure. He wrote, in a letter which
soon became famous, that he loved to hear bullets whistle, a sage
observation which he set down in later years as a folly of youth. Yet
this boyish outburst, foolish as it was, has a meaning to us, for it
was essentially true. Washington had the fierce fighting temper of the
Northmen. He loved battle and danger, and he never ceased to love them
and to give way to their excitement, although he did not again set
down such sentiments in boastful phrase that made the world laugh.
Men of such temper, moreover, are naturally imperious and have a fine
disregard of consequences, with the result that their allies, Indian
or otherwise, often become impatient and finally useless. The campaign
was perfectly wild from the outset, and if it had not been for
the utter indifference to danger displayed by Washington, and the
consequent timidity of the French, that particular body of Virginians
would have been permanently lost to the British Empire.

But we learn from all this many things. It appears that Washington was
not merely a brave man, but one who loved fighting for its own sake.
The whole expedition shows an arbitrary temper and the most reckless
courage, valuable qualities, but here unrestrained, and mixed
with very little prudence. Some important lessons were learned by
Washington from the rough teachings of inexorable and unconquerable
facts. He received in this campaign the first taste of that severe
experience which by its training developed the self-control and
mastery of temper for which he became so remarkable. He did not spring
into life a perfect and impossible man, as is so often represented. On
the contrary, he was educated by circumstances; b