resent train. If either the temper or the resources
of the country will not admit of an alteration, we may expect soon
to be reduced to the humiliating condition of seeing the cause of
America, in America, upheld by foreign arms. The generosity of our
allies has a claim to all our confidence and all our gratitude, but
it is neither for the honor of America, nor for the interest of the
common cause, to leave the work entirely to them."

It must have been bitter to Washington above all men, with his high
dignity and keen sense of national honor, to write such words as
these, or make such an argument to any of his countrymen. But it was a
work which the time demanded, and he did it without flinching. Having
thus laid bare the weak places, he proceeded to rehearse once more,
with a weariness we can easily fancy, the old, old lesson as to
organization, a permanent army, and a better system of administration.
This letter neither scolded, nor bewailed, nor desponded, but it told
the truth with great force and vigor. Of course it had but slight
results, comparatively speaking; still it did something, and the final
success of the Revolution is due to the series of strong truth-telling
letters, of which this is an example, as much as to any one thing done
by Washington. There was need of some one, not only to fight battles
and lead armies, but to drive Congress into some sort of harmony, spur
the careless and indifferent to action, arouse the States, and kill
various fatal delusions, and in Washington the robust teller of
unwelcome truths was found.

Still, even the results actually obtained by such letters came but
slowly, and Washington felt that he must strike at all hazards.
Through Lafayette he tried to get De Rochambeau to agree to an
immediate attack on New York. His army was on the very eve of
dissolution, and he began with reason to doubt his own power of
holding it together longer. The finances of the country were going
ever faster to irremediable ruin, and it seemed impossible that
anything could postpone open and avowed bankruptcy. So, with his army
crumbling, mutinous, and half starved, he turned to his one unfailing
resource of fighting, and tried to persuade De Rochambeau to join
him. Under the circumstances, Washington was right to wish to risk a
battle, and De Rochambeau, from his point of view, was equally so in
refusing to take the offensive, unless the second division arrived or
De Guichen came with his flee