Looking backward, with the stern years 1775-82 in mind, it is easy to see that then, in 1755, Pennsylvania and Virginia were to be put through a hard school for a glorious purpose. They were to be trained in the art of war. Of it they had known practically nothing. They had no effective militia. Of military ethics they had no dream. They knew not what obedience meant and could not understand delegated authority. Their liberty was license or nothing. Of the power of organization, concentration, discipline, routine, and method they were almost as ignorant as their redskinned enemies. Although the men of New England had not been given such great obstacles to overcome, it is undoubtedly true that their militia was far more adequate than anything of which Pennsylvania or Virginia knew, at least until 1758.[43] And yet Braddock died cursing his regulars and extolling the colonials! Washington was elected commander-in-chief in Virginia on his own dignified terms; the army was increased to sixteen companies and L40,000 were voted for general defense. By October the young commander was at Winchester, where he faced a situation desperate and appalling. The country-side was terror-stricken, and few could be found even for defense; many chose "to die with their wives and families." The few score men who attempted to stem the tide of retreat were almost powerless. "No orders are obeyed," Washington wrote Dinwiddie, "but such as a party of soldiers, or my own drawn sword enforces." Such was the frenzy of the retreat of the frontier population that threats were made "to blow out the brains" of all in authority who opposed them. But the young commander continued undaunted. He impressed men and horses and wagons, and sent them hurrying for flour and musket-balls and flints; he compelled men to erect little fortresses to which the people might flee. Not the least of his trials--undoubtedly the most discouraging--was the faithlessness of the troops sent out by Governor Dinwiddie upon the reeking frontier. Many of them were themselves panic-stricken and fled back with the rabble. The whole militia regime was inadequate; there was no authority of sufficient weight vested in the commanding officers to enable them to deal even with insolence, much less desertion. "I must assume the freedom," Washington wrote the governor, "to express some surprise, that we alone should be so tenacious of our liberty as not to invest a power, where interest and policy so unanswerably demand it.... Do we not know, that every nation under the sun finds its account therein, and that, without it, no order or regularity can be observed? Why then should it be expected from us, who are all young and inexperienced, to govern and keep up a proper spirit of discipline without laws, when the best and most experienced can scarcely do it with them?"