Waterbury evening Democrat., 1905-10-05
THE VANISHED DRUM.
According to French Order It Is Ruled Out of the Army in That
 Country.

If the Germans had done 1t, it would have been less surprising They were the first to turn armies into fighting machines and battles into complex nechanisms with diagrams. If the English had done it on one of their recurring fits of army reform. 1t would have been only one more evlaence that during those seizures they are capable of anything. If the Jap anese had done it, it would have seemed almost matter of course another of their incidental improve. ments upon the art of war But that Frenchmen, who love the stirring, the picturesque and the traditional, who keep warmer corner in their hearts for military glory than any other race that Frenchmen should have done it is almost unbelievable Yet there is the report of Gen. Faure-B Biguet in recent dispatches from Paris, and there is the approval of the minister of war. Henceforth there are to be no more drums and no more drummers in the French army. It is an order.
 Drums shrink when they are wetted, says the obseryant general. True; but SC do mems quickness and courage when they go into battle without sounds that have become almost an instinctive stimulus to them. Drums are heavy and cumbersome on march, continues the general. True again; but the beat of them has light ened the step of many tiring sol dier. There are 10000 drummers Tn the French army. They might be 10000 fighting men. But numbers have not always won battles. Bugles are easier to hear at distance. Have they the note of resolve in them that stays retreats?
 These are the protesting arguments of sentimentaliStS. The military ex- perts will properly disregard them. They are steeled against sentiment. as they are against some other things that have way of counting in human nature. They are turning war into a mechanical process, and soldiers into stripped but efficient machines. AL ready we have nearly smokeless bat ties. Now we may have nearly sound less. Troops may march to their thoughts of their regulations, not to the rhythmic tap of the drum. Gone are the distinctive uniforms. Every thing in dirt color. Lances are obso- lete, and cavalry but a show, except for scouting and pursuit. Thepageantry of war is becoming as remote from the actual business of 1t as the dresses at a costume ball from the everyday clothes of life. Has the change less ened the glamour and the sentimental and popular appeal of war and the soldiers trade? Some will say yes, and bid the experts beware that they are not killing their own profession.
 But the poets, the romancers, the painters and all the rest who use war in their arts are in the worst case of all. They are losing their mar tlal drum," and for centuries it has stood them in good stead. They have written songs around 1t, like Thack- sekay e1 made it into stories, like Kip ling; put 1t. into their foregrounds. like the French military painters. Soon. if the new fashion spreads, 1t will be only an humble instrument of percussion" in a concert orchestra. There will be no more artistic inspira- tion in it than there is in a triangle Once more a too practical age has siain sentiment in its tracks In few years it may be time for Thackeray's toast:
 So here's to all gentlemen drummers
 That ever have thumped on skin
 Globe.