Page:Samuel F. Batchelder - Bits of Harvard History (1924).pdf/72

 paper accounts of the later musters show that they consisted mainly of “elegant entertainments” (mostly spirituous) provided by the commanders, and elaborately staged—and perfectly useless—sham battles, a good deal in the nature of modern “pageants.” In 1769, Timothy Pickering (H. C. 1763) asserted that not one officer out of five knew the commands for the manual exercise or the simplest evolutions, and that the men constantly aimed at spectators when firing; he gives a scathingly satirical description of the training days. Even in the Revolution, de Kalb and von Steuben found they could be most useful as drill sergeants; Lafayette beheld with stupefaction an American regiment take ground to its right “by an eternal countermarch beginning on the left flank”; and Washington almost broke his heart in struggling “to introduce order and discipline into troops who have from their infancy imbibed ideas of the most contrary kind.” The fact is that your true-born Yankee does not take kindly to the idea of war; unpreparedness is his long suit; he lays to his soul the flattering unction of a supposed invinci-