That there was ever any essential bitterness of feeling here or in
America I will not admit for a moment, but that there was ignorance,
pig-headedness, and want of vision, is beyond all doubt. This want of
vision was specially illustrated during the Civil War. "The Spectator,"
however, I am proud to say, without being unjust to the South, or
failing to note its gallantry, and its noble sacrifices even in a wrong
cause, was consistently on the side of the North. Moreover, it realised
that the North was going to win, and ought to win, and so would abolish
slavery. There is a special tradition at the "Spectator" office of which
we are very proud. It is that the military critic of "The Spectator," at
that time Mr. Hooper, a civilian but with an extraordinary flair for
strategy, divined exactly what Sherman was doing when he started on his
famous march. Many years afterwards General Sherman, either in a speech
or on the written page, for I cannot now verify the fact, though I am
perfectly certain of it, said that when he started with the wires cut
behind him, there were only two people in the world who knew what his
objective was. One was himself and the other, as he said, "an anonymous
writer in the London 'Spectator.
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