# The Aparri News/Volume 1/Issue 45/A lengthy article concerning army affairs...

​A lengthy article concerning army affairs, written by Sidney Adamson, and published over his signature in several of the States papers, is attracting considerable attention throughout the army and there is much indignation among both officers and men over its appearance. The article is both unsavory and contradictory as well as unreliable, It pictures the army as a disorganized, discontented and grumbling force, who curse their God, their country and their offers. The article is contradictory in the extreme, for in one paragraph the American soldier is praised for his excellent fighting qualities, his bravery upon the field of battle, and the writer tells how he calmly and manfully bears the burden and hardships that are a part of any true soldier's life. He further states that the private is caused much suffering because of the thoughlessness on the part of his superiors and immediately following this paragraph is an abusive tirade against the soldier in which it is intimated that the army is largely recruited from ex-convicts, tramps and the slums of the unemployed classes, who know no such thing as obedience and who never had a good meal until they entered the service, and he says that even then they "kick" and that they expect a "hotel on wheels" and "ice water with every meal." Altogether the article is a most unsavory thing and is an insult to the country, the people and especially to the officers and men of the army, and it is so flagrant in its abuse of the soldier that it is attracting considerable attention throughout the service. In several places the enlisted men have met and passed resolutions denouncing Le article and in some instances committees have been formed with the avowed purpose of preparing a suitable article refuting the slander which will be so the press for publication: but we sadly fear that resolutions will have but little effect on this "valuable hombre" unless the remarks therein are emphasized with the "business end" of a Texas Cayuse that will kick him through a forty acre briar patch. That the article is unreliable and untruthful is self evident, for one has but to glance over the history of our country to get the record of American soldiery. Our nation was born upon a field of carnage and baptized in the blood of immortal heroes. Thousands gave up their lives that she might become a nation. Other thousands bled and died that the taint of slavery might be erased from her fair name. Others fought and died that anarchy, carnage, starvation and oppression might be driven from our back door. Our dead heroes have left us as a legacy, our nation's honor, integrity, and patriotism, and in giving up their lives they placed the American nation where she can let her future recompense the past by rescuing a foreign race from ignorance and superstition and giving to them their proper place in the world's civilization and advancement. In fulfilling her obligations, our country has had free access to the tower of American manhood, and in the ranks to-day are men who will, when they return home, be welcomed by men prominent in the highest walks of life.
There are thousands of soldiers here to-day and they are not "kicking" and grumbling, but are conducting themselves as honorable, upright men, enduring bravely all hardships. With all due knowledge at the perils, dangers and hardships here, manly men still cross the sea to fight their country's battles, and mothers, wives, sisters and sweethearts still bid those near and dear to them, farewell and Godspeed on their journey and if that loved one is brought back cold in death, they lament not, but gently murmur "Thy will be done" for they feel recompensed for their great loss by the knowledge that their loved one gave up his life for his country's sake, and it is poor consolation for them to know that anyone calling himself an American can think that her loved one met his death while a member of a mob of ex-convicts and low lived bums.
The American soldier considers it his duty to light his country's battles and he regards the performance of that duty his highest obligation, and it is an insult to his honor and purpose to be assailled with such accusations.