Rensselaer Journal, Volume 11, Number 12, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 August 1901 — People and Events [ARTICLE]

People and Events

Uncouthne-rs in the Army. General Miles has acted wisely in issuing a general order intended to promote a more trim and soldierly appearance on the part of the men in the United States army. All the American as well as all the foreign critics of our regiments in the Chinese expedition agreed that the American soldiers, while second to none in courage and efficiency, were deficient in drill and slouchy in appearance. General Chaffee recently has found it necessary to issue an order on this subject to his men in the Philippines. Now General Miles calls the attention of the whole army to “a certain uncouthness of exterior and laxity of manners,” which seem to be affected intentionally by some of the trqops under the mistaken idea that these are soldierly characteristics. The commanding general says offenses of this kind must stop. This carelessness in dress and discipline appears to have crept into the army at the time of the civil war. Up to that time the regulars were models of punctilious propriety. No European officers were more insistent in matters of discipline and pipeclay than those of our army before the ’6os. The civil war called into the field; vast bodies of untrained volunteers, who in time became as efficient fighters as the regulars, but who never acquired the perfection of drill or the rigid habit of keeping their uniforms in spotless condition. These volunteer regiments, with their splendid fighting and their careless dressing, set an example whose effect upon the regulars remains noticeable to the present day.—Ex.