giments, if sent into
the field at first, would have been helpless against the Mexicans, needs
no explanation (disagreeable as the idea is) to every recruit here. We
have at another conference been shown the detail work of supplying our
camps both at the training ground and on the hike, and the immense
importance of the work of the obscure quartermaster's department. Talk
after talk has impressed us with the amount of work needed to drill, to
equip, to work into fighting shape, even a few thousand men; and there is
no Plattsburg rookie who does not fully understand, and will not in
detail explain to his neighbors when he goes home, the absurdity of Mr.
Bryan's army of a million men which is to spring into being at the call
of the President. It would very much relieve us to be assured that the
government is ready to equip them even in the least particular.

General Wood has talked to us from time to time. Back at the training
camp he told us somewhat of our military history. You know our text-books
feed us up on our military glories; but looked at through the cold eyes
of the statistician we know now that these were achieved at the cost of
enormous and unnecessary losses, all from lack of system and readiness.
Moreover there are certain military disgraces which need to be called to
our attention, to make us resolve that these things shall not happen
again. Considering further that we have never yet had a war with a first
class military power (with two at least of whom we are in controversy
now) and remembering that not only has our national guard proved a
failure at this crisis, but that the new enlistments in the regular army
have not come to pass, so that it is many thousands below its paper
strength, we are now at the point of asking ourselves what we are to do
to meet the military necessity which will some day suddenly come upon us.
We believe it is coming; no soldier will deny it or can more than hope
against it. Therefore we must prepare--but how?

--It is time for our spread; Squad Nine has come not merely with camp
delicacies, but with cakes and candies from home! So I will break off
this gloomy epistle with, as usual, love from

DICK.

_P. S._ Still come the variations of the story of the clip of ball
cartridges. Someone knows somebody else who found it among his cartridges
one morning and slipped it into another man's belt. Thus the clip, and