serving our means of supply and transportation, although experience should have taught him their value and the difficulty of procuring them." 54
But, after all, the quarrel with Johnston was but one element in Davis's vast career; and it was the president's great good fortune that in his case patriotism and self-preservation went together and his most earnest and genuine efforts for his country were also for himself.
With Johnston the situation was unhappily different. He was never anything but nobly patriotic in intention. But the ruin of the nation was coincident with the ruin of his own personal enemy, and he brooded so deeply over that personal enmity that it seems as if his narrative were mainly occupied with the attempt to portray his enemy's injustice and consequent failures and mistakes. I have read and reread his book, and every reading deepens the impression of pity for splendid gifts so blighted, for great opportunities, not so much military as moral, thrown away. One, or two, or five quotations are not enough to justify this impression. It springs quite as much from what is unsaid as from what is said. Yet some quotation we must have.
To begin with, Johnston writes admirably, a clear, vigorous, logical style, which makes every point tell, bites, stings, lashes, if necessary. His vigor and brevity give the impression of absolute truth, and no one can suspect him of ever intending anything else. Indeed, his biographer declares that in all his statements he is singu-
