field had incurred could easily have been avoided by acting in a
precisely contrary manner.

In the emergency the most far-seeing recommended a more unbending
policy of extermination. Among these, one in particular, a statesman
bearing an illustrious name of two-edged import, distinguished himself
by the liberal broad-mindedness of his opinions, and for the time he
even did not flinch from making himself excessively unpopular by the
wide and sweeping variety of his censure. "We are confessedly a
barbarian nation," fearlessly declared this unprejudiced person (who,
although entitled by hereditary right to carry a banner on the field
of battle, with patriotic self-effacement preferred to remain at home
and encourage those who were fighting by pointing out their inadequacy
to the task and the extreme unlikelihood of their ever accomplishing
it), "and in order to achieve our purpose speedily it is necessary to
resort to the methods of barbarism." The most effective measure, as he
proceeded to explain with well-thought-out detail, would be to capture
all those least capable of resistance, concentrate them into a given
camp, and then at an agreed signal reduce the entire assembly to what
he termed, in a passage of high-minded eloquence, "a smoking hecatomb
of women and children."

His advice was pointed with a crafty insight, for not only would such
a course have brought the stubborn enemy to a realisation of the
weakness of their position and thus paved the way to a dignified
peace, but by the act itself few would have been left to hand down the
tradition of a relentless antagonism. Yet with incredible obtuseness
his advice was ignored and he himself was referred to at the time by
those who regarded the matter from a different angle, with a
scarcely-veiled dislike, which towards many of his followers took the