16 HALVDAN KOHT. [No. 3. 



considered individually, were not at all eompletely incapable. The 

 defect was deeper than a merely personal one. It was not bv 

 accident that Howe and Clinton did not assist the captains 

 who were their subordinates or were sent to cooperate with 

 them. It was the will of cooperation that was lacking. 



Howe had laid his ovvn plan of action, and he carried it 

 out, regardless of the changes that Burgoyne's expedition made 

 necessary, and of the fact that he thus sacrificed both Burgoyne 

 and his whole corps. Defending his conduct before the Parlia- 

 ment \ he proceeded on the assumption that his original scheme 

 had to be carried out at any cost, irrespectively of the dispo- 

 sitions of the generals sent to cooperate with him. And by way 

 of further apology he advanced as a reason of his neglect that 

 he did not want to be accused of attempting to steal another 

 officer's laurels. In both arguments we find the same inability 

 of understanding the necessity of military solidarity, the same 

 absence of the sense of real discipline. 



The case of Clinton and Cornwallis presents the same 

 aspect and, if possible, still more strikingly 2 . Cornwallis not 

 only conceived his military task in a different way from the 

 eommander-in-chief ; but he submitted his plans of campaign to 

 the War Department in London behind the back of his superior; 

 he was allowed to "communicate directly with the home govern- 

 ment, and he was supported by them against the commander- 

 in-chief. There was the root of that split in the campaign 

 management that brought about the defeat of Cornw 7 allis. 



After all, then, it was the supinéness and inefficiency of 

 the British Government that was the true cause of the outcome 

 of the war: they were not capable of enforcing discipline among 

 their ovvn highest officers. This was nothing but the natural 

 result of the corruption which, during most of the eighteenth 

 century, stamped English politics throughout, and which was 



1 The Narrative of Sir Willam Home relative to his conduct during 

 his late command in North America, London 1780. 



2 See B. F. Stevens, The Campaign in Virginia. 1781, London 



