[41:1] The battle of New Orleans, in the War of 1812, is not one of those incidents in English history which Englishmen generally insist on remembering, and it may be as well to explain to English readers that it was on that occasion that an inferior force of American riflemen (a "backwoods rabble" a British officer called them before the engagement) repulsed a British attack, from behind improvised earthworks, with a loss to the attacking force of 3300 killed and wounded, and at a cost to themselves of 13 wounded and 8 killed--or 21 casualties in all. Of the Forty-fourth (Essex) Regiment 816 men went into action, and after less than thirty minutes 134 were able to line up. The Ninety-third (Sutherland) Highlanders suffered even more severely. Of 1008 officers and men only 132 came out unhurt. The battle was fought after peace had been concluded, so that the lives were thrown away to no purpose. The British had to deliver a direct frontal attack over level ground, penned in by a lake on one side and a swamp on the other. It was the same lesson, in even bloodier characters, as was taught on several occasions in South Africa. [44:1] _Presidential Problems_, by Grover Cleveland, p. 281 (New York, 1904). [57:1] I had written this before reading Senator Hoar's Reminiscences in which, in speaking of his own youth, he tells how "Every boy imagined himself a soldier and his highest conception of glory was to 'lick the British'" (_An Autobiography of Seventy Years_). CHAPTER III TWO SIDES OF THE AMERICAN CHARACTER Europe's Undervaluation of America's Fighting Power--The Americans as Sailors--The Nation's Greatest Asset--Self-reliance of the People--The Making of a Doctor--And of a Surveyor-- Society in the Rough--New York and the Country--An Anglo-Saxon Trait--America's Unpreparedness--American Consuls and Diplomats--A Homogeneous People--The Value of a Common Speech--America more Anglo-Saxon than Britain--Mr. Wells and the Future in America. One circumstance ought in itself to convince Americans that cowardice or fear has no share in the greater outspokenness of England's good-will during these later years, namely that when Great Britain showed her sympathy with the United States at the time of the Spanish War, Englishmen largely believed that they were giving that sympathy to the weaker Power,[60:1]--weaker, that is as far as organised fighting strength, immediately available, was concerned. It is a century or two since Englishmen did Spain the compliment of being afraid of her. How then, in 1895, could they have had any fear of the United States?