Democratic Sentinel, Volume 6, Number 29, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 August 1882 — American and British Officers. [ARTICLE]

American and British Officers.

America sent as its military attache to th i Russian army for the campaign of 18r7-’7B a young engineer Lieutenant. That officer had to struggle against the disadvantages incident to the inferiority of his rank. But he did honor to his country and its army by writing the standard history of the Russo-Turkish war, a work of so great merit that the Russian general staff has adopted it as an obligatory study for its aspirants—a work that has become the text-book of that war to every student of the art military. To-day this officer is plodding along in the rank he held before the American subaltern took rank among the military historians of the world. The Russian Emperor has conferred on him not a few medals and decorations, some in appreciation of his knowledge of his profession, others in compliment to that personal courage of which his constant presence in the forefront of operations was fruitful in occasions for the proof. But these, in its austerity, the nation through its Congress has denied him the privilege of wearing. England also had a military attache with the Russians—an officer whose rank was that of Captain and Lieutenant Colonel in the Guards. He wrote nq history of the war, but his services were rewarded I with a full Colonelcy in the army, ; overstepping l£o seniors; an appoint- : ment as Aide-de-camp to the Queen ; the position of First Secretary to the I Vienna Embassy, and permission to wear the order conferred on him by the Russian Emperor. The Abyssinian ex- 1 pedition was almost exclusively an affair of commissariat, supplies and transportation ; a medal was granted for it, but the fighting done in it was infinitesimal. ! For his successful conduct in this operation a British General was made a Peer, received a money grant, the thanks of Parliament, and other honors and rewards. The officer who in his capacity j as Quartermaster General so organized | and carried out the system of supplying the Federal armies throughout the whole of the civil war that scarcety was only twice known, and that plenty all but universally reigned, held that honorable and onerous position for twenty years with the rank of a Brigadier General, and when he retired the-other day, had his Major General’s brevet converted into substantive rank for retirement purposes, as an exceptional honor accorded only in recognition of a career so meritorious. —Archibald Forbes, in North American Review.