Page:Mexico, Aztec, Spanish and Republican, Vol 2.djvu/145

Rh system of education and command, the Mexicans would make excellent soldiers. Their horsemen, probably the best riders on the continent, paid more attention to the management of their animals than to the use of their horse's force in the charge; while their infantry and artillery avoided those close quarters which make the bayonet so powerful a weapon when directed by intrepid, unquailing arms in the presence and under the lead of unflinching compnay officers. Their lancers did more damage to dismounted victims than to erect and fighting foes.

With the majority of the rank and file, the army is, in all likelihood, not a profession of choice. Enlistment is now scarcely ever voluntary. When men are required for a new regiment or to fill companies thinned by death or desertion, a sergeant is despatched with his guard to recruit among the Indians and peons of the neighborhood. The subaltern probably finds these individuals laboring in the fields, and without even the formality of a request, selects the best men from the group and orders them into the ranks. If they resist or attempt to escape, they are immediately lazo'd, and, at nightfall the gang is marched, bound in pairs, to the nearest barrack, where the wretched victims of military oppression are pursued by a mournful procession of wives and children who henceforth follow their husbands or parents during the whole period of service. From the hands of the recruiting sergeant the conscript passes into those of the drill sergeant. The chief duty of this personage is to teach him to march, countermarch, and to handle an unserviceable weapon. From the drill sergeant he succeeds to the company officer, and here, perhaps, he encounters the worst foe of his ultimate efficiency.

Officers in Mexico have no thorough military and scientific education. There is a military school at Chapultepec, near the capital, but it has never been carefully and completely organized, nor has it furnished many men who have distinguished themselves in the field. The politicians, relying on the dramatic power of the army, made that army the means of reward and influence in civil life, by selecting its officers of all grades from every employment or occupation. Merchants, tradespeople, professional men, children of wealthy or ambitious families, all attained rank in the army by this unwise means, and the consequence has been that the majority of company, and perhaps even of field officers, was rather fitted to display the magnificent uniforms to which their grades entitle them than to discipline the rank and file when organized in battalions, regiments and divisions.