His travel account speaks to social issues much more than military ones, and he makes the interesting comment that the war is good for American society. Until it began, he claims, the Americans were too parochial, with every man and family on a farm thinking they were the kings of the universe. Once thrown together in military association, the Americans started to see that there were other people in the world, people from whom they might, conceivably, learn things. As he expressed it: “One phase of this American war strikes a wanderer very forcibly; it is the change in the bearing of those who are engaged in it.”