“I now have the honour to assure you once more, as I did orally at our conference the day before yesterday:
“That I entirely respect your legal authority as regards your assent or non-assent to my proposals;
“That your instructions will be carried out strictly and if needs be with self-denial, as though you were present at all I do or say, or rather do not do or say.
“I know that in this you will trust to my loyalty.
“But I take the liberty to protest most solemnly against the slightest vestige of disapproval with regard to any action, any word, any phrase, which in this matter I have done, spoken, or written.
“I have the conviction that I have done my duty, in intention and in manner of execution, my whole duty, nothing but my duty, without the slightest deviation.
“I reflected a long time before I acted—i.e.: before I investigated, reported and proposed—and if I should have erred at all in anything . . . I did not err from precipitateness.
“In similar circumstances I should again do and omit—though with a little less delay—entirely and literally the same.
“And even if a more exalted authority than yours disapproved anything in what I did—excepting perhaps the idiosyncrasy of my style, which is part of myself, a fault I am as little responsible for as a stammerer is for his—if it were that . . . but this, no, this cannot be; yet if it were so: I have done my duty.
“It certainly grieves me—though without astonishment—that you have a different opinion on this—and if only my person were concerned I should resign myself to what appears to me a misjudgment—but a principle is at stake, and I have reasons of conscience which demand that it be settled whose opinion is correct, yours or mine.
“I cannot serve otherwise than I did at Lebak. If then the Government wishes to be served differently, then honesty compels me to beg respectfully to be relieved of my duties. Then, at thirty-
