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Rh vengeance was most valuable in the carrying out of his designs. If France ever beats Germany in the future la revanche will go further than any military genius. What Nelson did with hate we know, though we seek the secret of his genius in other and more showy qualities. It is easier and pleasanter to rouse admiration for his tactical and strategical qualities, or sentiment over Lady Hamilton, than to lay a finger on that crude elemental quality of hate and desire to kill the enemy.

To go further back—back to perhaps the very greatest man who ever lived—Hannibal. Hannibal was reared from early childhood to hate the Roman with all his strength. In the power of that hate, over obstacles and difficulties of the most tremendous nature, Hannibal marched to the ruin of Rome and never met with failure till the attractions of a petticoat swamped the single-mindedness of his hate, and he was no longer able to infuse into his legions the desire to kill the enemy as the mainspring of their action.

Capua spelt ruin to Hannibal and his army. Had Lady Hamilton been an ordinary woman there is little doubt that Trafalgar might not have been. It chanced that she was a woman of far-seeing ambition—perhaps the story of Capua was not unknown to her and she had the brain to read its lessons. In any case she never came between Nelson and his fervent desire to kill the enemy, but had the wit to accentuate it. Those 'services to the country' in connection with which