Not by all, however, for, from the moment the conflict seemed inevitable, stern-eyed men who had fought before began to count, not the cost, but the hours between the giving of an order and its fulfillment, between the calling and the coming, and finally when the results of their labors were completed the story of what they did may be partly told.

All the processes of making a soldier are as distinct as are those which mark the seed time and the harvest, the milling and the making of the loaf.  It can be readily seen that in a country where the standing army is but 25,000, and the militia forces of the various States bears such a slight proportion to the population, that manufactures of materials of use only in time of war could not flourish.  Thus it was that at the time of the commencement of hostilities there was available in the United States equipment for an army of less than one-fifth the size of that which afterwards took the field, and patriotism and fidelity were shown as much in the outfitting of that force, as can be shown in actual battle by any volunteer or regular officer, whether he be posted in fort or field, and win glory by brilliant dash, or simply doing his duty by holding his post.

The ready response to the President’s call for volunteers was sufficient to prove that the people were eager to take up arms and ready to go to the front.  But enthusiasm, patriotism and readiness never make an army.  An army is a great machine, of which each individual is a part, and there even the militia men of the various States, who had spent so much time in preparing themselves for just such a struggle, lacked the one great element without which no army can hope for success:  the capacity to move in unison.  Few of the States had given their men the training which makes of the simple company or regiment a wheel in the brigade or division.

In the great camps at Chickamauga, at Camp Alger, at Tampa, and at San Francisco the task of making an army from men who a month before had been working in the store, the mill or the field, went on.  This meant long, thorough drilling under competent instructors.  Careful study of the tactics and intelligent comprehension of the meaning of an order makes the soldier.  It is not possible to imagine anything more difficult than the thorough training of the arms bearer, and for this task the American seems better fitted than the men of any other country.  In an analysis of the soldiers of the world an authority would place the American, combining as he does the blood of nations, at the head of the list, for the reason that with his finer sensibility, his greater capacity to think while acting and to act while thinking, all tend to produce in him that character capable of high and perfect development in the soldier.

At Chickamauga, under General Wade; at Washington, under General Graham; at Tampa, under General Shafter; at San Francisco, under General Merriam, and on the New York and New England coasts under brigadiers who had served East and West, the raw material was formed, until at length the perfect soldier was produced, the soldier of whom it could be said: