Howe retired to New York and spent the winter there with his large force of 30,000; but at Trenton and Bordentown on the Delaware River some fifty miles away he placed two isolated outposts of about 1,500 Hessians each. Washington collected more men until his 3,300 had become 6,000 and with these raw militia he gobbled up those Hessian outposts just as the Boers have been gobbling up similarly placed British outposts. When a force of 8,000 British came out from New York to reoccupy Trenton, Washington cut in behind them, and at Princeton, finding some more British coming up widely separated and unable to support one another, he beat them in detail. This was brilliant, irregular Boer warfare on outposts and weak detachments. Washington was able to do it because his whole system was like that of the Boers, an irregular one. If he had had a regularly organized army and it had been reduced down to 3,300 it would never have been brought together again. He would have been done for. But his army was always one of the come and go kind. He had a small nucleus that could be relied upon to stay; but most of his force was composed of men who came from all parts of the colonies to serve three weeks, three months or six months then return home and have others come in their places. It was by this Boer method that all the armies of the rebel party during the revolution were kept going. When seriously defeated or when they had accomplished an object they would scatter as the Boers do and make it very difficult to destroy that which did not exist. Now that we have settled down and become a great nation all this seems like very foolish business to some of us who cut off coupons or sit at roll top desks endorsing the backs of documents until we have lost the natural feeling of vigorous manhood so characteristic of the Boers and the followers of Washington. We have forgotten our revolution. Our own acts in it now seem too heroic for our stomachs when we see others practicing them. Ireland has been practicing similar methods against England for hundreds of years. It may be a foolish game, but it can be made a very long one. It has lasted some seven hundred years in Ireland without success on either side. It lasted some thirty years in Cuba and was successful and we have set the seal of our approval on that success.