Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 10, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 January 1918 — Appearance of the American Soldier Has Always Impressed Observers [ARTICLE]

Appearance of the American Soldier Has Always Impressed Observers

By GERTRUDE P. BISHOP

Several foreign papers have remarked on the abearance of the American soldier, as a type so strongly set in its individuality that it has evoked interest in a world whose jaded vision ean but picture men in khaki. * , ' What in him has gained such wide attention? It is*the American 100k —that expression of intensified keenness, the look connoting eagerzest, and—best of- all —still unsatisfied interest in the world. As far back as 1777, when Burgoyne with his Hessians surrendered to the colonial army after the battle of Saratoga, that same impression of the American expression was apparent. A Hessian prisoner wrote in his memoirs: “We passed through the American camp in which all the regiments stood under arms. Not one of them was uniformly clad; each had on the clothes which he wore in the fields, the church or ihe tavern.

“They stood, however, like soldiers; well arranged and with a military air, in which there was but little to find fault. All the muskets had bayonets, and the sharpshooters had rifles. The men all stood so still we were filled with wonder. Not one of them made a single motion as if he would speak with his neighbor. Nay, more, all the lads that stood there in rank and file, kind nature had formed so trim, so slender, so nervous, that it was a pleasure to look at them, and we were all surprised at such a well-formed race.” * ' If the Hessian’s ghost returned* today, he would still find “the slim, rierVous lads that stood in rank and file,” with the same silent expression of courage and fire—but now clad in khaki in place of homespun. Through this internaturalization of all peoples has come a product yet unknown —the American soldier. For the butcher’s boy, the millionaire’s son, the clerk, the sport and the professor, have joined the army.