victor becomes tired of war;" and "the more
civilised," he adds, "a people is, the more quickly will this
weakness become apparent."* (* The Conduct of War. Von der Goltz.)
Whether this explanation be adequate is not easy to decide. The fact
remains, however, that the Confederate volunteer was able to overcome
that longing for home which chilled the enthusiasm of the German
conscript. And this is the more remarkable, inasmuch as his career
was not one of unchequered victory. In the spring of 1863, the Army
of the Potomac, more numerous than ever, was still before him, firmly
established on Virginian soil; hope of foreign intervention, despite
the assurances of the politicians, was gradually fading, and it was
but too evident that the war was far from over. Yet at no time during
their two years of service had the soldiers shown the slightest sign
of that discouragement which seized the Germans after two months. And
who shall dare to say that the Southerner was less highly civilised
than the Prussian or the Bavarian? Political liberty, freedom of
speech and action, are the real elements of civilisation, and not
merely education. But let the difference in the constitution of the
two armies be borne in mind. The Confederates, with few exceptions,
were volunteers, who had become soldiers of their own choice, who had
assumed arms deliberately and without compulsion, and who by their
own votes were responsible that war had been declared. The Germans
were conscripts, a dumb, powerless, irresponsible multitude,
animated, no doubt, by hereditary hatred of the enemy, but without
that sense of moral obligation which exists in the volunteer. We may
be permitted, then, to believe that this sense of moral obligation
was one reason why the spirit of the Southerners rose superior to
human weakness, and that the old adage, which declares that one
volunteer is better than three pressed men, is not yet out of date.
Nor is it an unfair inference that the armies of the Confederacy,
allied by the "crimson thread of kinship" to those of Wellington, of
Raglan, and of Clyde, owed much of their enduring fortitude to "the
rock whence they were hewn."

And yet, with all their admirable qualities, the Southern soldiers
had not yet got rid of their original defects. Temperate, obedient,
and well-conducted, small as was the percentage of bad characters and
habitual misdoers, their discipline was still capable of improvement.
The assertion, at first s