The defect of brilliant brains is not necessarily a {423} want of courage--daring there has usually been in plenty--but they are apt to lack fortitude. They are apt to abandon the assault upon positions which are not really invulnerable, and to go off, chasing after attractive butterflies, until they fall into quagmires. Dispersion of effort has always been the besetting sin of British statesmen and the curse of British policy. There is no clearer example of this than the case of William Pitt the Younger, who went on picking up sugar islands all over the world, when he ought to have been giving his whole strength to beating Napoleon. Very few obstacles are really insurmountable, and it is usually the shortest and the safest course to stick to what has been already begun. Especially is this the case when your resources in trained soldiers and munitions of war are painfully restricted. At the one point, where you have decided to attack, the motto is _push hard_; and at all others, where you may be compelled to defend yourselves, the motto is _hold fast_. The peril of British war councils in the past has always been (and maybe still is) the tendency of ingenious argument to get the better of sound judgment. In the very opposite of this lies safety. We find the true type of high policy, as well as of successful campaigning, in the cool and patient inflexibility of Wellington, holding fast by one main idea, forcing his way over one obstacle after another which had been pronounced invincible--through walled cities; into the deep valleys of the Pyrenees; across the Bidassoa--till from the crests of the Great Rhune and the Little his soldiers looked down at last upon the plains of France. {424} Our most urgent problem with regard to the present war, is how we may win it most thoroughly; but, in addition to this, there are two questions which have recently engaged a good deal of public attention. There is a _Political_ question--what sort of European settlement is to take place after the war? And there is also a _Criminal_ question--what sort of punishment shall be meted out, if crimes, contrary to the practice of war among civilised and humane states, have been committed by our antagonists? I have not attempted to deal with either of these. They do not seem to be of extreme urgency; for unless, and until, we win the war it is somewhat idle to discuss the ultimate fate of Europe or the penalty of evil deeds. You cannot restore stolen property until you have recovered it, and you cannot punish a malefactor, nor is it very convenient even to try him, while he is still at large. If that be true, which was said of old by a great king--_I do not make peace with barbarians but dictate the terms of their surrender_--we are still a long way from that.