of it over to me.  This was a piece of great good fortune for me, and I drilled the men industriously, mounted and unmounted.  I had plenty to learn, and the men and the officers even more; but we went at our work with the heartiest good will.  We speedily made it evident that there was no room and no mercy for any man who shirked any duty, and we accomplished good results.  The fact is that the essentials of drill and work for a cavalry or an infantry regiment are easy to learn, which of course is not true for the artillery or the engineers or for the navy.  The reason why it takes so long to turn the average civilized man into a good infantryman or cavalryman is because it takes a long while to teach the average untrained man how to shoot, to ride, to march, to take care of himself in the open, to be alert, resourceful, cool, daring, and resolute, to obey quickly, as well as to be willing, and to fit himself, to act on his own responsibility.  If he already possesses these qualities, there is very little difficulty in making him a soldier; all the drill that is necessary to enable him to march and to fight is of a simple character.  Parade ground and barrack square maneuvers are of no earthly consequence in real war.  When men can readily change from line to column, and column to line, can form front in any direction, and assemble and scatter, and can do these things with speed and precision, they have a fairly good grasp of the essentials.  When our regiment reached Tampa it could already be handled creditably at fast gaits, and both in mass and extended formations, mounted and dismounted.

I had served three years in the New York National Guard, finally becoming a captain.  This experience was invaluable to me.  It enabled me at once to train the men in the simple drill without which they would have been a mob; for although the drill requirements are simple, they are also absolutely indispensable.  But if I had believed that my experience in the National Guard had taught me all that there was to teach about a soldier’s career, it would have been better for me not to have been in it at all.  There were in the regiment a number of men who had served in the National Guard, and a number of others who had served in the Regular Army.  Some of these latter had served in the field in the West under campaign conditions, and were accustomed to long marches, privation, risk, and unexpected emergencies.  These men were of the utmost benefit to the regiment.  They already knew their profession, and could teach and help the others.  But if the man had merely served in a National Guard regiment, or in the Regular Army at some post in a civilized country where he learned nothing except what could be picked up on the parade ground, in the barracks, and in practice marches of a few miles along good roads, then it depended purely upon his own good sense whether he had been helped or hurt by the experience.  If he realized that he had learned only five per cent of his profession, that there remained ninety-five per cent to accomplish before he would be a good soldier, why, he had profited immensely.