The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1904-02-14
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A of the real, living, everyday
IexSf world more than has that work of
go Mr.. Rudyard Kipling which deals
with the life of the English soldier, both
the enlisted man and the commissioned
officer. saws Robertson Howard, in the
Critic. Although the Englishman already
knew a good deal about his army and
navy, 1t was not until Mr.. Kipling wrote
his stories tina the private life Of the
soldier was made known to his civilian
brothers.
Mr.. Kipling laid bare to the world that
only knew the soldier on parade, or at a
Queens review, or in camp at Aldershot.
his hopes and his fears, his happy hours
and those hours of black despair. He told
this other world, in his stories, about that
world in which the man lived who wors the
Queens uniform and stood guard along
the "far-fung battle line that girdles the
earth. And now all Englishmen and a
good many Americans know something of
the life of Tommy Atkins.
The soldier of the United States army
that ha~rdest-hghting, cleanest-living, most
intelligent soldier in all the world-has had
no Mr.. Kipling to inform his civilian broth
erS about his ways of living. One of his
own offieers-Captain Charles King-at-
tempted to do so, but drifted into the I'M
happy habit of writing very romantic love
stories in which the soldier appeared only
as a most haZy and vague background, in
which he would not even recognize him
self. Another of his ofticerS-Mr. George l.
Putnam-started in TO give the soldier a
place in the literature of his country, but
he became a disciple of Mr.. w. D.. Howells
to such an extent that one reading his
novels and stories could not even discern
the outlines OF any army post.
But there is a great deal of interest and
color and charm in the life of our regular
soldiers, and they have so many and such
interesting ways of life that il seems a
pity that these should not be known TO the
reading public.
With us the life Of the regular soldier is
Utmost a myth. Mr.. Remington has. in his
pictures, shown us something of military
life In the far West. And from these pic
lures and a few short stories the American
people have gathered the impression that
the regular and the cowboy and the In
dian made up the life Of the great West.
This is in no way true,
NJ one has ever written a novel-a really
frst-class work of acknowledging with the
life of the regular soldier. And yet the reg
ular's life is one crammed full Of color and
any one locality, but is bounded only by
the edges of the earth. Every evening at
sunset the band is playing "Star-spangled
Banner and the companies are standing at
attention" not only in a dozen different
army posts near our large cities, but in
Alaska, along the Mexican border. upon
little islands in midocean, in the SHOWS of
Montana, and under the burning sun of the
Philippine Islands. While some officers are
getting into fur coats to take "retreat'i In
a blizzard, other officers are getting into
evening clothes TO attend dinners and Ger
mans in New York or Washington or Chi
cago, and still other officers are out in the
| jungle in blue shirts hunting down ladrones.
And the soldier has suffered. God alone
knows how he has suffered. He has starved
and died in a hundred different ways. He
has his pleasures, for which he would die
rather than give UP. He is a boy in some
things, a philosopher in other things. He
knows how to live and how to die.
Indeed, there is no field in fiction so full
of color and charm and originality. And
it has been practically untouched.