these ever got near the front; and not nearly half of
those who did get there ever came into action at all.
Except at New Orleans, where the conditions were quite
abnormal, the militia never really helped to decide the
issue of any battle, except, indeed, against their own
army. 'The militia thereupon broke and fled' recurs with
tiresome frequency in numberless dispatches. Yet the
consequent charges of cowardice are nearly all unjust.
The fellow-countrymen of those sailors who fought the
American frigates so magnificently were no special kind
of cowards. But, as a raw militia, they simply were to
well-trained regulars what children are to men.

_American Non-Combatant Services_. There were more than
fifty thousand deaths reported on the American side; yet
not ten thousand men were killed or mortally wounded in
all the battles put together. The medical department,
like the commissariat and transport, was only organized
at the very last minute, even among the regulars, and
then in a most haphazard way. Among the militia these
indispensable branches of the service were never really
organized at all.

Such disastrous shortcomings were not caused by any lack
of national resources. The population o the United States
was about eight millions, as against eighteen millions
in the British Isles. Prosperity was general; at all
events, up to the time that it was checked by Jefferson's
Embargo Act. The finances were also thought to be most
satisfactory. On the very eve of war the Secretary of