trates the fact that any and all tactical formations
whether perfect or more loosely co-ordinated are soon broken up. Any
more tactical drill than is sufficient for such a purpose in time of
war--when all preparation must necessarily be hastened--is simply a mere
repetition looking to more perfect formations and movements and
therefore a sheer waste of time and effort.

Both Theodore Roosevelt and General Leonard Wood were then right in
their grasp of the situation and summing up of five weeks of _training_
and _battle activities_ of the "Rough Riders". Neither had had any
military training, either theoretical or practical--one having been a
college student, writer, ranchman, police commissioner, Secretary of the
Navy, etc., while the other had been a medical officer. Both, however,
had been out in the open under the stars, were alert, self-reliant,
versatile, many-sided, broad-guaged, tense, strenuous, level-headed,
far-sighted, sagacious, but withal, endowed with a large stock of good
judgment and plenty of good, sound horse sense. Neither had drilled a
troop of cavalry--much less a regiment--but they had had some good
regular officers and old non-commissioned officers assigned to start
them off, and furthermore, in the face of a war, then on, and quick
preparation for immediate battle service absolutely necessary, both saw
at a glance what every good soldier--whether theoretical or
otherwise--should see, that there was no time to waste in the mere
niceties of a perfect tactical drill; that all of the non-essentials
would have to be cut out--and the one essential, which they kept
steadily in view, in dealing with and licking into shape such a body of
men as the "Rough Riders" were, and which they were so suddenly called
upon to organize and put into battle--was _discipline_, more
_discipline_, and then _some_; to control the unruly elements, eliminate
the really vicious, and administer the severest punishment, tempered
with justice and mercy, for any and every infraction of the disciplinary
laws governing any large bodies of men trying to adjust themselves to
the novelty of control by superior authority appointed by the Government
to hold them in check, and to give them just sufficient tactical drill
to get them into and out of a battle mess, in a fairly orderly fashion.
The "Rough Riders" had been gathered from the "four corners of the
earth." What good could six months or a year, or even longer, of hard
drill or lon