in consequence of his being merely a cog in a vast and perfectly
ordered machine. I can assure the excellent French publicist that
American "militarism," at least of the volunteer sort, has points of
difference from the militarism of Continental Europe. The battalion
chief of a newly raised American regiment, when striving to get into a
war which the American people have undertaken with buoyant and
light-hearted indifference to detail, has positively unlimited
opportunity for the display of "individual initiative," and is in no
danger whatever either of suffering from unhealthy suppression of
personal will, or of finding his faculties of self-help numbed by
becoming a cog in a gigantic and smooth-running machine. If such a
battalion chief wants to get anything or go anywhere he must do it by
exercising every pound of resource, inventiveness, and audacity he
possesses. The help, advice, and superintendence he gets from outside
will be of the most general, not to say superficial, character. If he
is a cavalry officer, he has got to hurry and push the purchase of his
horses, plunging into and out of the meshes of red-tape as best he
can. He will have to fight for his rifles and his tents and his
clothes. He will have to keep his men healthy largely by the light
that nature has given him. When he wishes to embark his regiment, he
will have to fight for his railway-cars exactly as he fights for his
transport when it comes to going across the sea; and on his journey
his men will or will not have food, and his horses will or will not
have water and hay, and the trains will or will not make connections,
in exact correspondence to the energy and success of his own efforts
to keep things moving straight.

It was on Sunday, May 29th, that we marched out of our hot, windy,
dusty camp to take the cars for Tampa. Colonel Wood went first, with
the three sections under his special care. I followed with the other
four. The railway had promised us a forty-eight hours' trip, but our
experience in loading was enough to show that the promise would not be
made good. There were no proper facilities for getting the horses on
or off the cars, or for feeding or watering them; and there was
endless confusion and delay among the railway officials. I marched my
four sections over in the afternoon, the first three having taken the
entire day to get off. We occupied the night. As far as the regiment
itself was concerned, we worked an excellent syste