The daily morning journal and courier., 1898-08-30
BIG MEN Ys. LITrLR MEN

BIG MEN VS LITTLE MEN. When the war is all over and the army and navy medical departments | get down to the work of gathering and comparing statistics on fatalities | caused by disease and wounds" said naval surgeon of great experience, who is now in Washington on furlough, T am confident it will be found that the small, slight men who have been through the campaigns, both by field and flood, will be found to have been | the best endurers of hardships. This is a fact that I have often observed. The big, hard muscled, well-developed men go to pieces under severe hardship and succumb much quicker to epidem- | 10 disease as well as to the ordinary diseases of life than do the small, frail- looking chaps. Of course, no really Trail men get into the army and navy, but the service has always been filled With plenty of men under ordinary size, whose appearance with their clothes on causes men not familiar with the sub 1ect to wonder how they ever passed the physical examinations required by the army and navy.
 These undersized but perfectly | sound men, both in the army and navy, are the best for hard service. They may not be able to do such big things, but for long service full of trouble and Worriment and genuine hardships they are incomparably better than the big fellows, who look as if they might be able to outlast any three of the smaller men. I've often noticed that in prac- tice marches by naval landing parties the little fellows have invariably the best of the argument when it comes to heavy, double-tirne work under hot, tropical suns. I've seen huge sailors and marines drop out of line in sets of fours under such circumstances while the small, trig ue-jackets and sea sol- | diers stand to the game through every thing, and very rarely fall to the rear. Army surgeons tell me, too, that in rough campaigning in the west the smalltr men have invariably shown themselves to be better resisters of hardship than the big fellows. They say that among the doughboys, or in- fantrymen, when a big stature and flesh and muscle are always among the first to throw up their hands and ask for transportation in commissary and
 quartermaster wagons, while the small men trudge on doggedly
 Another thing the army surgeons
 tell me that might seem peculiar to those who haven't been in any military
 service is that the soldiers recruited
 from the cities are invariably better en-
 durers of hard campaigning than the
 soldiers recruited from the country dis
 tricts. It might naturally be thought
 that countrymen, used to open-air work and hopping over furrowed fields, would
 prove themselves away ahead of the
 city lads when it came to keeping in
 line on forty mile-a-day marches over western country, but the army surgeons say that the countrymen are the first to
 complain of sore feet and to cast their
 eyes longingly upon the wagons and
 ambulances at the rear. I'd rather have command of a company of Bowery 1 boys and city wharf-rats any time
 said one of the army surgeons to me not long ago, than f1tout of big, raw lads
 just off the farm. If the country boys
 go sore they don't appear to have the
 nerve to keep their heads closed about
 it and wait for their soreness to pass
 off, but they break for the sick report
 right away The city lads get their
 teeth down hard and grin and bear it.
 Aboard ship in the navy I've mo-
 ticed ever since I first went to sea,
 which was a matter of nearly thirty
 years ago, that when big bluejacket ; gets down sick in the sick-bay and a smaller man is taken with the same
 trouble that ails the bigman, the small CT chap invariably becomes convales- cent long before the big man begins to
 menr.
 Tn cases where ships have been att
 tached to become afflicted with epidem- : ics and half ships company have
 gone down I've observed that the chances of the small men recovering have always been almost twice as great as the chances of the big men. This is particularly true of levers that hit ships companies in tropical waters. A large, heavy man is twice as liable to get the fever known as coast fever,
 for example, as a small man, and he is
 twice as liable to die from it, too For
 example, about fifteen yearsago the old
 navy wind jammer I was attached to
 was working her way up the coast of
 Central America, when pretty nearly all hands got the coast fever. The big men were the first to get into the sick
 bay, but the disease was of a peculiarly violent character on that occasion, and
 within a week after the disease came over the side about quarters of the ships company, fore and aft, boys and men, were on the fiat of their backs.
 '"The first men to die were the huge, knotty- -muscled firemen. We lost half ; dozen of them, and then the big down-eas deck-hands-men that could handle a barrel of flour as easily as a washerwoman manipulates a flatiron- began to go Very few of the small , men died, although nearly all of them : had the fever badly. Out of twenty seven coal passers aboardeight were | huge men, and the remaining nineteen l were ofor dinary size or under the ordi-
 nary size. Seven of the big coal pass CTS had to be buried at sea, and not a l man of the small lot went over the side 5 with the shot tied to his feet. Among ? the officers of the navy, too, the same ) line of argument holds good. The : small, trim officers of the navy are not