The age-herald., 1898-10-12
KILLED.


 Volunteer officers, white. :. .. :. .... 3,357 Volunteer enlisted men, white. ....... 5i $50 Officers of colored troops.... 124 Enlisted men, colored....... ... 1,190 Reguars..... .~ .. l,3o5 Total... ...6O,3i6
 DIED OF WOUNDS.
 Volunteer officers, white... =. =. 1,595 Volunteer enlisted men, white......... 32O95 Officers of colored troops... 46 Enlisted men, colored... ... 1O37 Regulars..... ... llI4 Total.. .. . =. =. .. &, ,947
 DIED OF DISEASE.
 Volunteer officers, white.. ... ... ... 2,11 Volunteer enlisted men, white. .152, ,013 Officers of colored troops... ..... ..... 90 Enlisted men, colored... ..... 6,211 Regulars.... ... ... 3,OO9 Total. .. ... ... ... .. =. =. .. .183, ,464 These figures are not wholly accurate, perhaps. Other reports were made by the surgeon-general and the adjutant-generai, respectively, which put the statistics slight ly higher. A comparison in tabular form will best show the differences:
 Pro Mar Adjt Gen Sur Gen
 report. report. report. Killed. 6O,976 H,23S s, ,40S Wounds. ... .. 35,97 33,993 492O Disease... ..1SS,464 149,043 1S6, ,216 
 2SO,SS7 227,274 27O, ,s29 These figures, while apparently wide apart, really approximate each other enough to answer present purposes. If we strike an average between them we get: Rieu .'.' .''..''' ''.'.'.''. ............ 46, ,S4 Dled or wounds ....... 39, ,715 Dleu rom diseases .... .... ..... .172 ,9J7 Now let us bear in mind that the troops recruited in 1861 and the succeeding years or the war of secession were as raw as those we brought together for the war with Spain. They included perhaps a larger proportion of young men, taken off the farms, east and west, where they had had positively no training in diet or sani- tatfon. They were often sent on campaigns into country as malarial any which our soldiers of 1898 have found in the West Indies. They had vastly hotter and heavier fighting to do, a rule; for there is not veteran of the two wars who will not say frankly that a test of mettle he would rather face a whole brigade of Span- ish soldiers than a single regiment of "Yanks" or "Johnny Rebs,' filled with the spirit of thirty-four years ago. It, there fore, will not do to compare loss with loss in the two wars. Taking the three full years of the civil war we find from the best government records available that the men we had in the field present for duty" numbered
 December 31, 1862 ........ .69S SOP December 31 1863 ........ ......... ... .621 .25O
  December 31 1864 ...... .......... .... .620, ,92I or an average of 646, ,992 in each full year. Dividing the averages of the deaths in the civil war by the four years of active hos tilties, we get for each year, roughly: Killed ......... ....... ...... ............l,7lS Died of wounds ........ ........ ........ 9.92S Died of disease ...........- ....... ,229 Total annual average ........ ....... GA S75 The total percentage of loss to force hn for tIa oix what more than 10 per cent, justifying Secretary Alger's claim of a smaller per- centage of loss for the war with Spain than for the war of secession. This is only a partial view of the facts, however, as has already been intimated. If we scrutiniZe Secretary Alger's figures for the Spanish war:
 Killed .............. ...... ......... 2S0 Died of wounds ......... 65 Died of disease ...... ...........255 Total - .. . ............2s BIO and find the percentage of each class of causes of death to the total Joss, we get a basis of comparison which really tells us something of the way the Spanish war was managed. Comparing the percentages thus obtained with those which we derive from the official figures of the civil war, we have:
 Civil war. Spanish war. Killed ...... .... ...1S 1-10 D. c. 6-10 D. c. Died Of WOundS.....15 II 5-lU D. C.. 3-1U ID. c. Died of disease ....66 6-10 D. c. SS 1-10 p. 0. From this 1t appears that in the civil war there was almost twice as large percent age of men killed as in the Spanish war, a natural result of the greater ferocity and closer quarters of the fighting; about seven times as large percentage of deaths from wounds, disparity doubtless due to the greater surgical skill developed during the last thirty years, enabling many lives to be saved now which in old times would have been promptly given up; but a percentage of deaths from disease only three-fourths as great This is the significant feature of the contest Brave men enter an army to fight, and with a full consciousness of the peris awaiting them in a campaign. They realize that they are liable to be ploughed down by a cannonade, torn to pieces by bursting shell, blown up by unsuspected mines, riddled by bullets. But all these envoys of death come from hostile sources, and are among the things to be counted upon. What not one soldier in thousand takes into consideration is the possibility that his own government-the precious or ganization for which he is fighting, and which represents the one idea his patriot ism cherishes most profoundly-may con- demn him to death or permanent invalid ism without treating his eyes to a view of the enemy or his nostriIs to whiff of burnt powder. Men do die of disease in the field, even in the presence of the foe; and that is an abnormal form of death to