Bismarck daily tribune. [volume] (Bismarck, Dakota [N.D.]) 1881-1916, 1915-09-07
CAMP
AN INTERESTING ONE
Almost Every Tent in Camp Con-
tains at Least One Mil
lionaire
BEST u. S. OFFICERS
IN CHARGE OF MEN
Nothing in Camp That Savors
of military Madness e,
However
BY THOMAS r. SHlPP.

Men mere MT you IlSII I"S
eyes. First, it is Not a war move
Second, it's main purpose is not only
to train men to be officers and, third
it's men are not exclusively from the
East. They are from all parts OF the
country. The funny side of million
aires and world-famous men as mere
ROCKIES" is not thought of at all. The
men arc here for work. They are
Serious about it. The regular army
officers over them are driving them
hard from daylight till dark.
The camp has a meaning to the Ma
ton, which, as yet, is not fully real1z
ed. While the idea vas conceived
only a few weeks ago, it has been in
the ~su..,ccnscious minds of thoughtful
conservative men for a long time. 1t
is net a war thought. It is a peace
thought-peace through preparedness
and preparedness against" instead OF
"for" war, as Hudson Maxim has said,
1t is that the American nation must
be awakened not only to it's defense
less condition but to its need of ma.
tional discipline" The idea of those
responsible for the camp may be gen.
orally summed up like this:
1t took the Civil War to make the
American Nation, but as the years
have gone by and a new generation
has grown up, there has been a slump
in national discipline. We have be.
become SNUG and self-satisfied. Even
now, treading dangerously on the very
-.a-xo 80 - ,;%,o%;o, %h0{ roioht % n
the complete ~overturning if not the
ob%literation of everything that we as
a nation and as individuals hold dear,
We Are Asleep.
The big men here are anxious over
this condition. They say that if the
country could be shaken out of it's
c%omplacency by some great orator like
Daniel Webster, it would be sufficient.
They say if some leader of thought
could convince The country Of it's
great need that would be all that is
required. But no such man has arisen.
Something else had to be done, they
say. Hence the camp at Plattsburg,
a protest by prominent Americans.
Here, the learning of the drill man.
ual, important in itself, is secondary
to the big idea in the minds OF the
men who made the camp a possibility
that America should wake up.
Robert Bacon, once American Am
bassador to France and former Sec
rotary of State of the American Ma
ton, is here, a private in the ranks
until the record he made here advanc-
ed him to company sergeant. He says
he is here as a protest against condi-
tons that permit u present unpre-
paredness to be possible.
The men in the ranks here whose
names "mean something" are too
many to attempt to record anything
like all of them. Company rosters read
like pages of who's Who in Ameri-
ca" For instance, there is, in politics,
Mayor Mitchell, Of New York City;
Dudley Field Malone, Collector of the
Port of New York; in world diplom-
acy, Robert Bacon and Nelson o.
Shaughnessy, former Charge d Affair
es in Mexico; Raymond P. Tenney, of
Pekin, China; in law, there is George
Wharton Pepper, of Philadelphia, and
d.. W.. L lShCl LIZ VI ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS III
the financial world, there is Willard
Straight, of the j. P. Morgan firm; in
literature, Richard Harding Davis;
then there are the Cabots and Ian
crofts, of Massachusetts, the Pages of
North Carolina, the Roots and Roose-
velts and Hamilton-Fishes the Nor
gahs, the P~ierreponts, the Chambers
and the Iselins of New York; in foot
ball, there is Haughton and Wheeler
and the Poes; besides, there are three
nephews of Henry James, who recent
ly renowned his American citizenship
and men like G.. f.. Porter Of Chicago,
and Murray Cobb and Basil Miles or
Washington, and K. B. Mcclure OF
Piedmont, Cal, and G. A. Dreyfous, of
New Orleans; j. S. Miller, Jr. of Win
netka, ILL.,; Il. G. Starrett, of Sheldon,
Ia; H. l.. George, of Pittsburgh; j. II.
Bachelor, of Kansas City, Mo-; Cleve-
land Mather, of Denver; w. M. Bullitt,
of Louisville, KY: R. II. ("Dick') Lit
tie of Chicago, and others from Mem
phis, Buffalo, Ann Arbor, Harrisburg,
Toledo Aurora, ILL.,; Eccles, w. Va;
Marion, o.; Wilmington, DEL, and
Norfolk, Va.
General Leonard Wood and thirty
other picked officers of the United
States Army, men who have seen act
ual fighting, and trained troopers hard
as nails, are at the elbows of these
prominent Americans, teaching them
the thousand and one %intricacies Of
the school of the soldier. And tho
men don't shirk. They are up at day.
break. They drill all day and after
dark has fallen over the strange, tent.
co city Of American leaders, one can
hear in the company streets the cone
two, one-two," as raw recruits are put
through their PAGES. Little candle
lights here and there and groups Of
khaki-clad men about them are i'm
promptu schools where tanned and
hardened army officers are explaining
the meaning Of the movements of the
day to the eager and attentive men.
who are accustomed to teaching 9th.
ers, but who now listen like little
school boys. They are learning by
hard work the absolute fa]lacy of the
argument that America could raise an
army over night.
The word "militarism" never is
heard in the Plattsburg camp. There
is not a thing that savors of "mili-
tary Madness Men are learning to