Page:The City of the Saints.djvu/354

336 from general society. The civilian, as was the case in England twenty years ago, dislikes the uniform. His principal boasts are, that he pays his fighting servants well, and that he—a militiaman—is far superior to the regular. A company of Cadets, called the Chicago Zouaves, during the summer of 1860, made a sensation throughout the land. The newspaper writers spoke of them in terms far higher than have been lavished upon the flower of the French army; even the military professionals were obliged to join in the cry. As a republican, the citizen looks upon a soldier as a drone. "I hate those cormorants," said to me an American diplomat, who, par parenthèse, had made a fortune by the law, as he entered a Viennese café. L'arte della guerra presto s' impara is his motto, and he evinces his love of the civilian element by giving away a considerable percentage of commissions in the army to those whose political influence enables them to dispense with the preparation of West Point.

I am here tempted to a few words concerning the cheap defense and the chief pride of the United States, viz., her irregular army. The opposite table shows the forces of the militia to be three millions, while the regular army does not number 19,000. The institution is, therefore, a kind of public, a writing, speaking, voting body, which makes itself heard and felt, while the existence of the regulars is almost ignored. To hint aught against the militia in the United States is sure seriously to "rile up" your civil audience, and Elijah Pogram will perhaps let you know that you can not know what you are talking about. The outspoken Britisher, despite his title and his rank as a general officer, had a "squeak" for his commission when, in the beginning of the volunteer mania, he spoke of the new levies as a useless body of men: it is on the same principle in the United States. Thus also the liberal candidate declares to his electors his "firm belief that, with all our enormous expenditure, the country had not felt itself secure, and straightway a noble arm of defense, springing unbought from the patriotism of the people, had crept into existence, forming a better shield for our national liberties than all that we had been able to buy with our mounds of gold." (Cheers.) The civilian in the United States boasts of his military institutions, his West Point and his regular army, and never fails to inform a stranger that it is better paid than any force in Europe. On the other hand, he prides himself upon, as he is probably identified with, the militia.

That writing, speaking, and voting have borne fruit in favor of the militia, may be read in the history of the Americo-Mexican War. The fame of the irregulars penetrated to Calcutta and China: it was stopped only by the Orient sun. But who ever heard of the regulars? The "newspaper heroes" were almost all militiamen, rangers, and other guerrillas: "keeping an editor in pay" is now a standing sarcasm. The sages of the Revolution initiated a yeo