ay that
the Mexicans make very good soldiers, and fight well and steadily when
well trained and well officered. They are able to march surprising
distances, day after day, to live cheerfully on the very minimum of
food, and to sleep anyhow. This we could judge for ourselves. One thing
there is, however, that they strongly object to, and that is to be
moved much beyond the range of their own climate. The men of the plains
are as susceptible as Europeans to the ill effects of the climate of
the tierra caliente; and the men of the hot lands cannot bear the cold
of the high plateaus.

Travellers in the United States make great fun of the profusion of
colonels and generals, and tell ludicrous stories on the subject. There
is also talk of the absurd number of officers in the Spanish-American
armies, but we should not, by any means, confound the two things. In
the United States it is merely a harmless exhibition of vanity, and an
amusing comment on their own high-minded abnegation of mere titles. In
Spanish America it indicates a very real and serious evil indeed.

Don Miguel Lerdo de Tejada, in his statistical chart for 1856, quoted
above, estimates the soldiers in the Republic at 12,000, and the
officers at 2,000, not counting those on half-pay. One officer to every
six men; and among them sixty-nine generals. These are not mere militia
heroes, walking about in fine uniforms, but have actual commissions
from some one of the many governments that have come and gone, and are
entitled to their pay, which they get or do not get, as may happen.
Only a fraction of them know anything whatever about the art of war.
They were political adventurers, friends or relatives of some one in
power, or simply speculators who bought their commissions as a sort of
illegitimate Government Annuities. The continual rebellions or
pronunciamientos have increased the number of officers still further.
Comonfort's notion of degrading all the officers of the rebel army was
a new and bold experiment. A very common course had been, when a
pronunciamiento had been made anywhere against the then existing
government, and a revolutionary army had been raised, for an
amalgamation to take place between the two forces; intrigue and bribery
and mutual disinclination to fight bringing matters to this peaceful
kind of settlement. In this case, it was usual for the rebel officers
to retain their self-conferred dignities.

I think this body of soldierless officers