Every sensible person in the country must be very much
in favour of the peroration in the Daily Mail's Wednesday leading article. We have not forgotten, and are never likely to forget, " that most famous of Pitt's sayings : Defensive ?par spells ruin." We must, however, also not forget that panic, and the tendency to declare that we aro ruined and betrayed whenever we have a set-back or anything disagreeable happens, likewise spell ruin. If our ancestors, instead of standing by the pilot and weathering the storm, bad shrieked and screamed and railed at him whenever he met with a disaster—and he met with plenty—the nation could never have come through I he great struggle with Napoleon. Hysterics and wild searchings in the dark for a heaven-sent military dictator of supreme genies but name unknown who is not there will never win the war. We want, above all, sobriety of action, and the calmness and force which come of sobriety of action, and these, we venture to nay, we shall never get if we exalt a person like Mr. Pemberton- Billing into a genius of war.
