BRITISH CONFIDENCE IN THE SOUTH After three years of great Northern efforts to subdue the South and of Southern campaigns aimed, first, merely toward resistance, but later involving offensive battles, the Civil War, to European eyes, had reached a stalemate where neither side could conquer the other.

To the European neutral the situation was much as in the Great War it appeared to the American neutral in December, 1916, at the end of two years of fighting.

In both wars the neutral had expected and had prophesied a short conflict.

In both, this had proved to be false prophecy and with each additional month of the Civil War there was witnessed an increase of the forces employed and a psychological change in the people whereby war seemed to have become a normal state of society.

The American Civil War, as regards continuity, numbers of men steadily engaged, resources employed, and persistence of the combatants, was the "Great War," to date, of all modern conflicts.