[Note: Those who suffered in Sherman's March to the Sea--I was riveted to my bed at the time--were not, are not so philosophic. See the narrative in BRADLEY JOHNSON'S Life of Joseph E. Johnston. Nor was I so philosophical when I followed the raiders of 1863, nor when I saw the fires that lighted up the Valley of Virginia in 1864, and that was before the systematic devastation recorded by MERRITT, who carried it out. "When our army," says MERRITT (Battles and Leaders, 4, 512), "commenced its return march, the cavalry was deployed across the Valley, burning, destroying or taking nearly everything of value, or likely to be of value to the enemy. It was a severe measure, and appears severer now in the lapse of time, but it was necessary as a measure of war." The plea of 1864 was the same as the plea of 1914. In a vivid sketch of Sherman's March, Prof. HENRY E. SHEPHERD, whose North Carolina home, Fayetteville, lay in the track of the invaders (Battles and Leaders, 4, 678) winds up by saying that the portrayal of it "baffles all the resources of literary art and the affluence even of our English speech," and those who know Professor SHEPHERD'S resources and affluence will recognize the desperate nature of the task. As for the Valley, I have before me a protest against the erection of a monument to Sheridan, in which the writer gives an itemized account of the havoc inflicted on the property of non-combatants in the County of Rockingham alone. The protest reminds me of my youthful surprise when I first saw the statue of Tilly in the Feldherrnhalle at Munich. Somehow I had not thought well of Tilly before. But all estimates of military exigencies must be revised by the light of the new standards of the time in which we live. However, as this note goes to the printer, I am made aware of an article by Maj. JOHN BIGELOW, U. S. A., published in the N. Y. Times of June 13, 1915, in which the author musters the evidence of the behaviour of Sherman's men. 1864 seems not to have been so very far behind 1914 after all.] [Note: "The hate of Celt to Saxon, and the contempt of Saxon for Celt, simply paled and grew expressionless when compared with the contempt and hate felt by the Southron towards the Yankee anterior to our Civil War and while it was in progress. No Houyhnhnms ever looked on Yahoo with greater aversion; better, far better death than further contamination through political association."--C. F. ADAMS, Trans-Atlantic Historical Solidarity, p. 176. One recalls Halleck's Connecticut: Virginians look Upon them with as favorable eyes As Gabriel on the devil in paradise.]