Evening star., 1914-11-08

kxTHE conscription of youths OF
boys in the armies of Ger
many, Austria and France
puts the breath Of life into the story
that the American civil war was fought
by boys" said man who spends his
working hours among the musty rec
ords of the pension bureau. Then he
continued: There has been a great
deal of fiction written and spoken
about the extreme youth of the SOL
diers of the north in the American war
There were instances of mere boys
fighting in the ranks, but these in
stances were exceptional and were sc
far apart that they attracted consider
able attention at the time. The records
do not bear out the statement that the
civil war was fought by boys.
The statement is popular because ii
is picturesque and has SO often been
repeated. There is very plausible
reason for the frequent repetition of
this fable. A man who enlisted at
twenty years of age did not at that
time consider himself a boy. He con-
a man than any fellow of thirty-five
or forty, and in the matter of manhood
or manliness thought himself very
much superior to any old codger or
Yet. now that that stalwart young
chap of twenty has arrived at the ma
ture age of seventy, he thinks of him
self. and is always speaking of him
self. as having been but a mere boy, or
a slip of a lad or STRIPPING when
he enlisted in the Federal army. When
he marched away from his home, or left
ms native village or farm for some re-
eruiting center he was, of course, n
boy to his mother, his father and older
friends who knew him as baby and a
little boy and had seen him grow up
without fully realizing the flight of the
years or the changes that they brought
To most of those people he ALWAYS re-
manned boy, and now in his ripe age
he appears to himself to have been only
boy.
Soldiers even with gray boards are,
III popular American fancy, always SOL
der boys. regiment, a brigade or a
division of husky and lusty young
chaps is always our boys This
brings to my mind a very nice and
subtle distinction which regular SOL
dfers themselves make and which VOL
unteers. when they have. to all intents
and purposes. become regulars, also
make.
ITO illustrate. A hard. red-necked,
tean, seralBht and tough -muscled bat
terry sergeant in commenting to his bat
terry commander on 4 fellow non-com-
missioner officer said: Sir, ne is a SOL
dier-man.' The sergeant said, simply,
quietly and in a most matter Of fact
way that the man he spoke of was
'soldier-man.' but there was a little
more stress on the word man than on
the word soldier The fact that the
man was a 'soldier-man' meant, to the
sergeant and to the officer that the
soldier was about everything that
soldier ought to be. To have called
him soldier without emphasis on the
word would have conveyed no other
meaning than that the man spoken of
was an enlisted man. To have spoken
of him as a 'soldier-boy' would seem
such maudlin sentiment as to make a
seasoned soldier grin in a sickly or a
contemptuous way. When a soldier
says of another soldier that he is
'soldier-man,' he conveys the same
meaning as conveyed by a man who
says of another, He is every inch a
man. and then puts a little vocal em-
phasis on the words inch and man.
"Now, to come back to the boys
who fought the American civil war.
About forty-five years ago a statement
was made by the adjutant generals
department that the average age OF