DIFFERENCE BETWEEN CIVIL AND MILITARY LIFE.
Military life, with the labors, exposures, and circumstances of war, differs widely from civil life. The social and domestic machinery of home spontaneously brings within the reach of families the things that are needful for their sustenance, comfortable for their enjoyment, and favorable to their health. But this self-acting machinery follows not the soldier through his campaigns. Everything he needs or enjoys is to be a matter of special thought, and obtained with a special effort and often with difficulty. Much that was very comfortable and salutary in civil life must be given up in the camp. The government is the purveyor for and the manager of the army; it undertakes to provide and care for, to sustain and nourish the men. But, with all its wisdom, power, and means, it is not equal to the thousand or thousands of housekeepers that cared and provided for these men when at home; and certainly it does not, and probably cannot, perform these domestic offices as well and as profitably for the soldiers as their natural providers did. Nevertheless, the Government is the sole provider for the army, and assumes the main responsibility of the physical condition of its members.
Starting with the very common belief that the human body has an indefinite power of endurance, or, if it suffer from disease, or fall in death, it is from causes beyond man's control,—seeing, also, that it is impossible to carry the common means of sustaining life into the camp, Governments seem willing to try the experiment of requiring their men to do the hard work of war without a certain, full supply of sustenance. They expect from the army the largest expenditure of force, but sometimes give it the smallest means and poorest conditions of recuperating it.
The business of war is not constant and permanent, like the pursuits of peace. It therefore comes to most managers as a new and unfamiliar work, to which they can bring little or no acquaintance from experience. They enter upon untried ground with imperfect knowledge of its responsibilities and dangers, and inadequate conceptions of the materials and powers with which they are to operate. They therefore make many and some very grave mistakes, every one of which, in its due proportion, is doubly paid for in drafts on the nation's treasury and on the soldiers' vital capital, neither of which is ever dishonored.
Military life is equally new to the soldier, for which none of his previous education or experience has fitted him. He has had his mother, wife, sister, or other housekeeper, trained and appointed for the purpose, to look after his nutrition, his clothing, his personal comfort, and, consequently, his health. These do not come without thought and labor. The domestic administration of the household and the care of its members require as much talent, intelligence, and discipline as any of the ordinary occupations of men. Throughout the civilized world, this responsibility and the labor necessary for its fulfilment absorb a large portion of the mental and physical power of women.
When the new recruit enters the army, he leaves all this care and protection behind, but finds no substitute, no compensation for his loss in his new position. The Government supposes either that this is all unnecessary, or that the man in arms has an inspired capacity or an instinctive aptitude for self-care as well as for labor, and that he can generate and sustain physical force as well as expend it. But he is no more fitted for this, by his previous training and habits, than his mother and wife are for making shoes or building houses by theirs. Nevertheless he is thrown upon his own resources to do what he may for himself. The army-regulations of the United States say, "Soldiers are expected to preserve, distribute, and cook their own subsistence"; and most other Governments require the same of their men. Washing, mending, sweeping, all manner of cleansing, arrangement and care of whatever pertains to clothing and housekeeping, come under the same law of prescription or necessity. The soldier must do these things, or they will be left undone. He who has never arranged, cared for, or cooked his own or any other food, who has never washed, mended, or swept, is expected to understand and required to do these for himself, or suffer the consequences of neglect.
The want of knowledge and training for these purposes makes the soldier a bad cook, as well as an indiscreet, negligent, and often a slovenly self-manager, and consequently his nutrition and his personal and domestic habits are neither so healthy nor so invigorating as those of men in civil life; and the Government neither thinks of this deficiency nor provides for it by furnishing instruction in regard to this new responsibility and these new duties, nor does it exercise a rigid watchfulness over his habits to compel them to be as good and as healthy as they may be.