I have received [he writes] so many letters from people whose opinion I value, expressive of their admiration of the exploit, that I begin to attach to it more importance than I was at first inclined. Should the affair be viewed in England in the light it is here, I cannot fail of meeting reward, and escaping the horror of being placed high on a shelf, never to be taken down. Some say that nothing could be more desperate than the measure; but I answer, that the state of the province admitted of nothing but desperate remedies. I got possession of the letters my antagonist addressed to the secretary of war, and also of the sentiments which hundreds of his army uttered to their friends. Confidence in the General was gone, and evident despondency prevailed throughout. I have succeeded beyond expectation. I crossed the river, contrary to the opinion of Colonel Proctor, . . . etc.[34]; it is, therefore, no wonder that envy should attribute to good fortune what, in justice to my own discernment, I must say, proceeded from a cool calculation of the _pours_ and _contres_. General Brock, along with most other British leaders who operated along the American frontier, has been accused of using the savages to fight in savage ways the battles of white men against fellow whites. Rossiter Johnson, in his _War of 1812_, to cite one of the careful students who has thus referred to Brock, in speaking of the minute-guns fired on the American shore during Brock's funeral, says: There was perhaps no harm in this little bit of sentiment, though if the Americans remembered that two months before, in demanding the surrender of Detroit, General Brock had threatened to let loose a horde of savages upon the garrison and town, if he were compelled to capture it by force, they must have seen that their minute-guns were supremely illogical, not to say silly.[35] One who has any reason to know how much basis Washington had for his sweeping remark that most of the trouble the United States had with the western Indians was due to the demeanour of British officers to them, could only with difficulty become prejudiced in favour of any British officers who had actual dealings with the Canadian Indians and actually led them in person to battle. And yet the present writer has found sufficient ground in Brock's correspondence for holding that Brock was above reproach personally on this score--that he was a gentleman here as elsewhere, a true nobleman. We cannot here enter into a lengthy discussion of such a difficult problem. A letter extant, written by Brock to General Prevost, shows his attitude in this delicate matter during those desperate days when Harrison was fighting the wily Tecumseh: