The great Admiral was always wholehearted in his declamation against the French people and their leaders who are our present allies fighting against that country which now is, and which Napoleon predicted to his dying day would become, one of the most imperious, inhuman foes to civilization.  Nelson and his government at that time thought it a merciful high policy of brotherhood to protect and re-create Prussia out of the wreck to which Napoleon had reduced it; the result being that the military spirit of Prussia has been a growing, determined menace to the peace of the world and to the cause of human liberty in every form since the downfall of the man who warned us at the time from his exiled home on the rock of St. Helena that our policy would ultimately reflect with a vengeance upon ourselves, and involve the whole world in a great effort to save itself from destruction.  He foresaw that Prussia would inveigle and bully the smaller German states into unification with herself, and, having cunningly accomplished this, that her perfidy would proceed to consolidate the united fabric into a formidable power which would crush all others by its military superiority; this dream of universal control of human life and affairs was at one time nearly realized.

The German Empire has bankrupted herself in men, necessaries of life, and money.  But that in no degree minimizes the disaster she has wrought on those who have had to bleed at every pore to avoid annihilation.  The Allies, as well as the Central Powers, are no longer going concerns.  It will take generations to get back to the point at which we started in 1914.  But the tragic thought of all is the enormous sacrifice of life, and the mental and physical wrecks that have survived the savage, brutal struggle brought on a world that was, and wished to remain, at peace, when in 1914 the Central Powers arrogantly forced the pace which caused an alliance to be formed quickly by their enemies to save them from the doom which Napoleon, with his clear vision, had predicted would come.

It was fitting that Nelson should by every conceivable means adopt methods of declamation against the French, if by doing so he thought it would inspire the men whom he commanded with the same conquering spirit he himself possessed.  His country was at war with the French, and he was merely one of the instruments appointed to defeat them, and this may account for his ebullitions of hatred from time to time.  I have found, however, no record that would in any way show that it was intended as surface policy, so it may be concluded that his dislike was as deep-seated as it appeared.  Nelson never seems to have shown evidences of being a humbug by saying things which he did not believe.  He had a wholesome dislike of the French people and of Bonaparte, who was their idol at that time.  But neither he nor his government can be credited with the faculty of being students of human life.  He and they believed that Paris