ident:

Passing a dark corner one night I encountered a M.
P. (Military Policeman). Some of the M. P.s are a
bit rough. They have to be, and they would wade
into a den of wildcats.

"Hey, you pencil pusher," he called, "did you see
the big boss?"

I had.

"Well," he said, "you've flashed your lamps on the
finest man that ever stood in shoe leather."

One day General Pershing arrived at a station where a motley crowd
greeted his coming. The following day there was posted on a bulletin
board of the barracks a cordial commendation of the young French officer
who had so efficiently done his duty at the station in handling the
somewhat unruly assembly at the arrival of the American commander and
his staff. That is General Pershing's way. Quietly cordial, looking for
good in every one of his men and usually finding it, a strict
disciplinarian and quick to punish neglect or an evil deed, he is the
idol of the army.

"General Pershing is one of the finest men I ever met. Everybody in the
army admires him greatly," declares a prominent American officer, and
another adds, "I have never met a nobler man in my life than General
Perching."

According to a statement of an orderly sergeant of the commander, the
General has a regular order for beginning the work of every day. Rising
at five o'clock there is first a half hour of setting up exercises which
the two men take together. Next the General, although he is at an age
when most men abandon running except as a necessity or a last resort,
goes out for a run of fifteen minutes. Later there is a united attack
upon the medicine ball and there is no slight or "ladylike" exercise.
Although the sergeant is twenty-five years younger than the General, he
acknowledges that he is usually the first to declare that he has had
sufficient for the beginning of the day.

The hour of retirement is usually eleven o'clock, and just before that
time there are more setting up exercises, after which the sergeant says
he himself is entirely reconciled to the suggestion to turn in.

In this way and because he has followed this somewhat strenuous plan
since he was a young man General Pershing has kept himself in
magnificent physical condition.

Indeed, the sergeant said that in the ten years during which he had been
the commander's orderly he has never known but one day when the General
was incapacitated