The Van Buren press., 1898-08-20
ARP MAKES APOLOGY
BE Did Not Intend to Wound ANY,
body's Feelings.
The Comparison He Made Claiming
That Volunteers Behaved Bet-
ter Thnn Regular Army
Soldiers,

error he should apologize. From va
rious letters received from gentlemen
Il don't mean Gregg l have become
satisfied that however bad the mate
rial out of which the average regular
is made he can and does in time be-
come disciplined and makes a good
soldier. Of course no young man who
has pride or ambition or pleasant do
nestle relations or loves pretty girl
would willingly offer himself to be en-
shaved as a private in the regular
army. The reasons for doing this
must be peculiar and extraordinary.
1t is simply an escape-a refuge from
a worse condition that is impending.
have known few of those who en-
listed ard they did we'll Iknow some
now who ought to. tits fortunate that
there is a regular army for this class
OF unfortunates to join.
\ gentleman writes me from Macon
and says: you are too hard upon the
regulars and I doubt if you have had
much experience with them" No, |
have not. for but few have ever been
''At'N.N WV IL ~ Nop1NltlIlN III the III
terror, where there are no ports of
entr- and no floating population. Our
only experience was during the civil
war. when we were unable to distin-
guish regulars from volunteers so far
as conduct was concerned on their
march tc the sea. This Macon gentle
man says that the only big camp row
that has occurred in this war was in
the camp of Georgia volunteers, and
he beEs me not to write so thoughtless-
ly and says: you would dissuade
every decent nan from joining the
standing army and we would have only
an army of toughs and brutes who
would disgrace Christendom. No
camp of regulars was ever guilty of
such bestiality as occurred at ChicRa-
mauga"
Well, there is now good chance for
a moral fight between the regulars
and the volunteers and hope the dis
cussion will do good and raise the
standard of our soldiers. Hundreds
of them have lisgraced their calling
and spread terror in their march to
the gulf and paralyzed the patriotism
of our people. My Macon friend says:
81 Travelled with a few regulars not
long ago who had just reenlisted for
another five years and / talked to one
who was more than ordinarily intelli-
gent and when l expressed surprise
that he should reenlist he said there
g., oh 60 4
it operated alike on the private and
the epaulet, and that it offered fine
opportunity for self-culture and the
acquisition of book learning. He gave
me new views upon the subject, and l
was glad to talk to him." Well, of
course there is a light to every shad-
ow and there are many men of many
minds. Some men turn hermits from
disappointed hopes or for contempla-
ton, and l suppose that private in
the regular army who draws SIS a
month and is fed and clothed and has
no responsibility and there is no pros
pect of war, can pass self-satisfied ex-
istence. Self-satisfeu! but who else
does he live for?
My ideal of the patriot soldier is the
volunteer-the men who in the reyo-
luton of 1776 left the plows and their
shops, and seizing their guns and
their knapsacks, rushing to meet the
invaders. Those are the kind that
fought for the south in the late civil
war, fought against odds of four to
one and put a million on the pension
rolls. Can it be possible that the sons
of those veterans are the soldiers who
are disgracing their fathers and their
uniforms and their state by their
shameful conduct? No! My Macon
friend is mistaken. The rioters were
not Georgia volunteers. I'll bet on
it. The Constitution tells of some
Iowa soldiers, the Twenty-ninth regi-
ment, who went down on the South
ern the other night and broke all the
lamps and window glass in the cars,
and at a station where the train
stopped awhile they went out and
ran the people out of their houses in
the dead of night.
But a thoughtful Atlanta friend
says: MY friend, it is useless and
impolite to criticise the army during
war. We must suffer in silence
and endure what we cannot help"
I reckon that is good advice, and l
am reminded of the old woman whose
little dog barked necessarily at the
soldiers who passed, and she said:
Hush, Fido, hush, you'll bark your
little self TO death. You can't bite an
army"
And so l will hush and let the pro-
eession proceed, but 1 am pleased to
see that Capt Davies, of Atlanta, is
drawing the lines and rejecting all
tramps and vagabonds and lawless
men who apply to join his command.
Every veteran of the army of North
ern Virginia remembers how much
trouble the Louisiana Tigers gave the
officers. They ~'ere the wharf rats
of New Orleans-devils incarnate who
feared not God nor regarded man, but
they fought like tigers and fell with
their faces to the foe. This is their
best epitGph. just so even the worst
of our soldiers / reckon will fight the
Spaniards. Some of them have al
ready fought and fallen, and as they
are az now at the front and in con-
slant peril, let us draw the curtain
over the past and say "Allah is mer-
ciiul-great is Allah"
And the Press says the army is go
inc 10 celebrate the Fourth of July by
attacking and taking Santiago. 1t
will be an inspiring day for Americans
90