AMERICA THE SELF-CRITICAL 49

White House, now converted into a museum of
war relics (tragic enough), and I have also paid
my respects to the statues in the city, raising my
hat to Lee, the greatest General the war produced,
and again to Stonewall Jackson who might have
been as great as Lee but for the shot, fired by
mistake, which laid him low at Chancellorville.

On the whole the statues of the southern
generals strike me as a more satisfactory type of
military memorial than those of their northern
opponents* With some exceptions the northern
generals are represented in attitudes too heroic
to be really impressive, too defiant, too ostenta-
tiously out for blood and thunder, too self-
consciously bent on giving the enemy hell, too
evidently inviting the passer-by to come and see
them do it. One feels inclined to be sorry for
these poor generals solidified for all .time in
attitudes which no man could maintain for more
than a few seconds without making himself
ridiculous. The southern generals sit their
horses with greater dignity and seem rather to be
thinking out the strategy of a campaign than
heading a charge on the cannon's mouth. Lee,
you reflect, might spend an eternity just as he is,
thinking out his campaign, or Beauregard1 in
remembering Charleston, but neither Sherman
nor Sheridan could spend eternity in giving the
enemy helL Had I nothing but statues to go by,
my sympathies would be unreservedly on the side

1 In Charleston.