If we follow the blow with vigor and energy, I think the game is our own." Again he wrote in July: "Sir Guy Carleton is using every art to soothe and lull our people into a state of security.

Admiral Digby is capturing all our vessels, and suffocating as fast as possible in prison-ships all our seamen who will not enlist into the service of his Britannic Majesty; and Haldimand, with his savage allies, is scalping and burning on the frontiers." Facts always were the object of Washington's first regard, and while gentlemen on all sides were talking of peace, war was going on, and he could not understand the supineness which would permit our seamen to be suffocated, and our borderers scalped, because some people thought the war ought to be and practically was over.

While the other side was fighting, he wished to be fighting too.

A month later he wrote to Greene: "From the former infatuation, duplicity, and perverse system of British policy, I confess I am induced to doubt everything, to suspect everything." He could say heartily with the Trojan priest, "Quicquid id est timeo Danaos et dona ferentes." Yet again, a month later still, when the negotiations were really going forward in Paris, he wrote to McHenry: "If we are wise, let us prepare for the worst.

There is nothing which will so soon produce a speedy and honorable peace as a state of preparation for war; and we must either do this, or lay our account to patch up an inglorious peace, after all the toil, blood, and treasure we have spent." No man had done and given so much as Washington, and at the same time no other man had his love of thoroughness, and his indomitable fighting temper.