of the fatal battle was treated with scarcely disguised contempt
and neglect.

In a letter to the British War Minister, Governor Dinwiddie speaks of
Colonel Washington as a man of great merit and resolution, adding:

I am confident, that, if General Braddock had lived, he would have
recommended him to the royal favor, which I beg your interest in
recommending.

The sole results were a half-rebuke from the King, and a malicious fling
from the lips of Horace Walpole. For more than three years Washington
labored incessantly, by personal effort and by means of influential
intercessors, to secure a royal commission.

In view of what the world knows now of Washington's well-nigh matchless
ability as a soldier, and remembering especially the reputation he had
already acquired--amazing in so youthful an officer--his persistent
neglect by the military authorities "at home," and particularly the
stubborn and doltish determination on the part of the King to ignore the
man and his almost unexampled services, suggests the theory that the
heart of King George, of England, was as truly and providentially
"hardened" as was that of his royal prototype, Pharaoh, of ancient
times. For, finding that all his efforts were ineffectual and believing
that the chief object of the war was attained by the capture of Fort
Duquesne, and the final defeat of the French on the Ohio, the young hero
retired after five years of arduous and ill-requited service, in the
words of a great writer of our own land and time:

The youthful idol of his countrymen, but without so much as a civil
word from the fountain of honor. And so, when after seventeen years
of private life he next appeared in arms, it was as the
"Commander-in-Chief of the Army of the United Colonies, and of all
the forces now raised, or to be raised by them."

The same writer elsewhere remarks:

Such was the policy by which the Horse Guards occasionally saved a
Major's commission for a fourth son of a Duke, by which the Crown
lost a continent; and the people of the United States gained a
place in the family of nations. The voice of history cries aloud to
powerful Governments, in the administration of their colonies:
"Discite justitiam moniti."

_A Furious Conflict_

The last of the six marvelous escapes of our hero from impending and
fatal disaster occurred during the historic night march of Washington
and the Ame