Little Falls herald. [volume] (Little Falls, Morrison County, Minn.) 1889-1950, 1898-05-27

that they have made a failure IN life''
sonehowor other and have gone into
" the army as sort Of refuge. Nine
tenths of the regular soldiers, when ask
ed where they come from, mention some
city or large town. The great rural
. masses Of the population Of the United
States seem to be only slenderly repre-
I sented in the regular army
In fact, it is not at all a representa-
tive thing. The question may we'll be
asked whether it ever can be, insview Of
T the necessity of the maintenance Of the
social relations between officers and pri-
Yates which have mentioned The Or
binary white American is unwilling
to accept q relation of conspicuous So
cial inferiority for two reasons. One,
and the lesser, is that he has been
taught historically that such relation
must not exist in the United States be-
cause it is politically dangerous, and
the other and greater reason is that the
women for whom he most cares de-
I. spises him if he enters into it. The av-
erage American is never going to be a
regular soldier so long as the girls of
the same sort Of people that he belongs
to refuse to be seen walking on the
street with a regular soldier when they
will freely walk with volunteer pri-
vate. The social ambition and keen SEN
sitiveness Of American women to social
distinctions cut figure in this ques-
tion Of the increase of the regular army
which has never been taken sufficiently
into account.
Some other things that see here tend
to convince me that the volunteer serv-
ice is the real soldering that Ameri-
cans think Of and that regular army
can never be anything more than thing
apart from their lives and thoughts.
The regular soldiers whose terms of Of
fee are expiring or likely to expire dur
ing this Office are all anxious to go into
the volunteers rather than to re-enlist.
No great number Of them appears likely
to be able to get into the volunteer serv-
ice just now, but it has great attractions
to them. So it has to all the young off,
GERS. They seem to be to a man anxious
to get commissions in the volunteer
army superior to the ones they now hold
in the regular army: They all hope to
return to the regulars after their posi-
BILE volunteer service shall be over, and
they do not hope to go back to it on
terms much better than their present
ones. But the service appears real, in
viting and stirring to them. Even they
seem to recognize a sort of relation in
the volunteer service to the vital activi-
ties of the nation which perhaps they
do not feel in the regulars
But, with it all, certain prejudices
that civilians may have felt against the
regular army are likely to weaken when
one has spent some time in contact with
it. If regular army officers are bound to
keep the privates in a certain place and
not allow them to get above it, they are
nevertheless very far from appearing to
feel themselves a superior caste. Disci-
pline, not degradation for the soldier, is
what they seek. Among themselves they
are very democratic body. They put
on no "airs'' at ALL ''Militarism" in
the German sense they know nothing
about. / believe they are incapable Of
entertaining any notion of hostility to
the liberties of the country. They cher
ish a tradition that Grant and Sherman
both informed President johnson, when
he sounded them as to whether the army
could be relied on " case Of trouble BE-
tween him and congress, that indeed it
could be depended on to take the side Of
congress. The old fashioned ideas Of the
civil bases of things in the United States
are entertained by officers Of the regular
army as instinctively, + suppose, as they
To get American officers who are en-
tirely loyal to american ideas'' is per-
fectly easy, but to get American SOL
diers for regular army-that is differ
ent.
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