The simple fact was that under the circumstances it was necessary for me to enforce discipline and control the regiment, and therefore to reward and punish individuals in whatever way the exigencies demanded.  I often explained to the men what the reasons for an order were, the first time it was issued, if there was any trouble on their part in understanding what they were required to do.  They were very intelligent and very eager to do their duty, and I hardly ever had any difficulty the second time with them.  If, however, there was the slightest willful shirking of duty or insubordination, I punished instantly and mercilessly, and the whole regiment cordially backed me up.  To have punished men for faults and shortcomings which they had no opportunity to know were such would have been as unwise as to have permitted any of the occasional bad characters to exercise the slightest license.  It was a regiment which was sensitive about its dignity and was very keenly alive to justice and to courtesy, but which cordially approved absence of mollycoddling, insistence upon the performance of duty, and summary punishment of wrong-doing.

In the final fighting at San Juan, when we captured one of the trenches, Jack Greenway had seized a Spaniard, and shortly afterwards I found Jack leading his captive round with a string.  I told him to turn him over to a man who had two or three other captives, so that they should all be taken to the rear.  It was the only time I ever saw Jack look aggrieved.  “Why, Colonel, can’t I keep him for myself?” he asked, plaintively.  I think he had an idea that as a trophy of his bow and spear the Spaniard would make a fine body servant.

One reason that we never had the slightest trouble in the regiment was because, when we got down to hard pan, officers and men shared exactly alike.  It is all right to have differences in food and the like in times of peace and plenty, when everybody is comfortable.  But in really hard times officers and men must share alike if the best work is to be done.  As long as I had nothing but two hardtacks, which was the allowance to each man on the morning after the San Juan fight, no one could complain; but if I had had any private little luxuries the men would very naturally have realized keenly their own shortages.

Soon after the Guasimas fight we were put on short commons; and as I knew that a good deal of food had been landed and was on the beach at Siboney, I marched thirty or forty of the men down to see if I could not get some and bring it up.  I finally found a commissary officer, and he asked me what I wanted, and I answered, anything he had.  So he told me to look about for myself.  I found a number of sacks of beans, I think about eleven hundred pounds, on the beach; and told the officer that I wanted eleven hundred pounds of beans.  He produced a book of regulations, and showed me the appropriate section and subdivision which announced that beans were issued only for the