Morris tribune. [volume] (Morris, Minn.) 1880-2000, 1881-11-10
THE AMERICAN SOLDIER.

Archibald Forbes Opinion of n Connecticut
Regiment on Parade at Charleston, South
Carolina.
One or the most delighted spectators of
the superb marching and dress parade of
the First Connecticut regiment was Archi-
bald Forbes, the famous war correspondent
of the London News TO reporter of the
Charleston Neaps and Courier, who had a
talk with him, he said:
1--WE Establishment have habit of looking
down upon talking man, ami to agree with
Carlyle, when he says, The able man is the
silent man, and am bound to say that the
first night was here, when heard those
Connecticut men crate, with a good deal of
buncombe thrown in said to myself, Much
that TN told that will see to. morrow will
be promise without full6llment.' But it
came about quite the other way, and am
free to say that it seems to me that if there
are q eat many regiments like that Connect
ticut regiment which saw here On parade in
The nation, it don't want any standing army
at all, as they would constitute far cheap
er and more effective force than any stand
ing army would. have seen all the arm
les in the world, I believe, from Afghan
scalawags to Russian Imperial Guards, and
l have never seen greater precision and
stability than those men manifested on that
dress parade. To me it was revelation,
and rather disagreeable revelation from
this point of view, which you can easily
understand, that became painfully aware
that there was another factor in the world
| capable of beating us. A man never likes
to find out that the number of men strong
| er than himself is on the increase. We
Englishmen have been indulging in the
| satisfaction, that however continental coun.
! tries might grow with their millions of re-
| serves against our 100000 or 100000
| trained troops, We were yet capable of
| staggering over the United States in the
matter of drill and discipline, and the pune
tilious performance of evolutions. But
| what I saw yesterday proved to me that
| such was not the case. Those men marched
and wheeled quite equal to our grena-
dier guards, and I don't think have seen
anything to equal the precision in the man
ual in that dress parade. 1t seemed to me
that the commanding officer, who went to
the front, and moved as piece of mechan-
ism, had his foot on an electric wire which
communicated with the regiment, and that
each man was mere automaton, not
moved by the word of command, but by the
colonels foot on the concealed wire in the
| ground, and what I admired most of all
was the absolute r1gidity of the accuracy
that was preserved in the minutest detail.
"The tendency of a republican country
like this is to iespise the accuracy which
does not bear fruit right away, but the ac-
curacy in military affairs, which appears
good to outsiders, is really tie means to an
end. It is the evidence of that discipline
which in the time of danger may be found
to have no other stable reliance than by
that consuetude which rigorous drill and
parctice carries with it. The week point of
all volunteer improvised forces is that they
have not that amount of discipline that be-
comes engraftea into the very nature of the
old soldier but those men seemed yester-
day to have been that way SO long, that
what they did VAS not the result of thought.
fulness, not the result OF first rehearsal
or second rehearsal, but the performance
of thing by note, and they had
come to that perfection as naturally as the
taking Of a cocktail. All this seems to
come out of an infinite capacity for taking
pains in these Connecticut people. 1t
seems to me that comparing (for didn't
like to contrast, but comparing what I
saw, that your South Carolina people we're
deficient in comparison with these Con-
necticut troops in mechanical accuracy.
They looked well, and all the world knows
that they are good fighting men, but they
had not got that punctilious accuracy In
keeping step and in the manual which
brings confidence to General in large
maneuver. In other words, their disci-
pine was not 80 good.