st in great abundance in the
breasts of young Americans. All they need is instruction, discipline,
a little experience, such as our greatest soldier said he himself
needed at first, and, above all, intelligent leadership, which can
be acquired only by military education, to make them the best
soldiers the world has ever known.

YELLOW FEVER AVERTED

When I joined my company as second lieutenant in Florida in the
winter of 1853-4, I found the company had been reduced to one lance-
sergeant, two lance-corporals, and thirteen privates. Yellow fever
had done its deadly work. But that lesson was not lost. In later
years, upon the approach of that enemy, which could not be conquered
even by the highest science then known or practised, the troops
were marched a few miles into the pure air of the piney woods,
where the dreaded fever could not reach them. At the close of the
epidemic season which occurred when I had the honor to command the
army, I had the great satisfaction of reporting that not a single
soldier had been killed by that most dreaded of all enemies, and
the even greater satisfaction of reporting that those bravest of
the brave, the surgeons who volunteered to go into the very midst
of the camp of the enemy that does not respect even the red cross,
to minister to those who had been stricken down and to study the
nature of the disease for the future benefit of the army and of
mankind, had also been unharmed. As chief of those I do not hesitate
to name the present surgeon-general of the army, George M. Sternberg.
Yet how many of the noblest soldiers of humanity have given their
lives in that cause!

Hood's assault at Franklin has been severely criticized. Even so
able a man as General J. E. Johnston characterizes it as a "useless
butchery." These criticisms are founded upon a misapprehension of
the facts, and are essentially erroneous. Hood must have been
fully aware of our relative weakness in numbers at Franklin, and
of the probable, if not certain, concentration of large reinforcements
at Nashville. He could not hope to have at any future time anything
like so great an advantage in that respect. The army at Franklin
and the troops at Nashville were within one night's march of each
other; Hood must therefore attack on November 30, or lose the
advantage of greatly superior numbers. It was impossible, after
the pursuit from Spring Hill, in a shor