The men I cared for most in the regiment were the men who did the best work; and therefore my liking for them was obliged to take the shape of exposing them to the most fatigue and hardship, of demanding from them the greatest service, and of making them incur the greatest risk.  Once I kept Greenway and Goodrich at work for forty-eight hours, without sleeping, and with very little food, fighting and digging trenches.  I freely sent the men for whom I cared most, to where death might smite them; and death often smote them—­as it did the two best officers in my regiment, Allyn Capron and Bucky O’Neil.  My men would not have respected me had I acted otherwise.  Their creed was my creed.  The life even of the most useful man, of the best citizen, is not to be hoarded if there be need to spend it.  I felt, and feel, this about others; and of course also about myself.  This is one reason why I have always felt impatient contempt for the effort to abolish the death penalty on account of sympathy with criminals.  I am willing to listen to arguments in favor of abolishing the death penalty so far as they are based purely on grounds of public expediency, although these arguments have never convinced me.  But inasmuch as, without hesitation, in the performance of duty, I have again and again sent good and gallant and upright men to die, it seems to me the height of a folly both mischievous and mawkish to contend that criminals who have deserved death should nevertheless be allowed to shirk it.  No brave and good man can properly shirk death; and no criminal who has earned death should be allowed to shirk it.

One of the best men with our regiment was the British military attache, Captain Arthur Lee, an old friend.  The other military attaches were herded together at headquarters and saw little.  Captain Lee, who had known me in Washington, escaped and stayed with the regiment.  We grew to feel that he was one of us, and made him an honorary member.  There were two other honorary members.  One was Richard Harding Davis, who was with us continually and who performed valuable service on the fighting line.  The other was a regular officer, Lieutenant Parker, who had a battery of gatlings.  We were with this battery throughout the San Juan fighting, and we grew to have the strongest admiration for Parker as a soldier and the strongest liking for him as a man.  During our brief campaign we were closely and intimately thrown with various regular officers of the type of Mills, Howze, and Parker.  We felt not merely fondness for them as officers and gentlemen, but pride in them as Americans.  It is a fine thing to feel that we have in the army and in the navy modest, efficient, gallant gentlemen of this type, doing such disinterested work for the honor of the flag and of the Nation.  No American can overpay the debt of gratitude we all of us owe to the officers and enlisted men of the army and of the navy.