until the day of his inauguration he gave no sign; then in his speech
the people, whose hearts were standing still in their eagerness to hear,
found reassuring sentences. Yet nothing seemed to follow during many
anxious weeks; the suns rose and the suns set, and still the leader
raised no standard around which the people could rally, uttered no
inspiring word of command which could unite the dissevered political
cliques. What was in his mind all this while can never be known, though
no knowledge could be more interesting. Was he in a simple attitude of
expectancy, awaiting the march of events, watchful for some one of them
to give him the cue as well as the opportunity for action? Many believe
that this was the case; and if it was, no other course could have been
more intelligent. In due time events came which brought decision with
them, the crisis shaped itself, and he was ready with clear and prompt
action. When it was known what he would do, matters were settled. The
people, once assured that the fight would be made, entered upon it with
such a temper and in possession of such resources that, in spite of
those trying fluctuations which any wise man could have foreseen, they
were sure in the end to win.

It would be out of place in these prefatory paragraphs, to attempt any
skeleton picture of the momentous struggle. I believe that the story is
told very completely in the lives which compose this group. The
statesmen who controlled events during the war were a new group; they
were not young men, neither were they unknown or untried in public
affairs; but they were for the first time in control. In their younger
days they had been under the shadow and predominance of the old school
of statesmen, whose object had been to prevent, or at least to defer
indefinitely, precisely that crisis which was now present. They
themselves, on the other hand, had been strenuously advocating the
policies which had at last brought that crisis into existence. But the