The Military Parade.
For Thursday, September 30, came another splendid day when the military parade made New York tingle with marching tunes and the rhythmic tramp of men. Here was something that always quickens the popular pulse. We had seen many like it in this big, thrilling town, but none that surpassed it. The primal impulse coming from the thought: “Here are our defenders; here our men who face death for Fatherland,” has to answer, no doubt, for the cheers that greet the men at arms as they swing marching by. When kingcraft added pomp, glitter and jingle to it and tamed the trumpet to sing a siren song, and patriotism fluttered flags above it rich in color and hung on gold-tipped spears, the magic was complete. Yet this pageant showed us more in one way and less in another. More, in the fact that it showed us thousands of soldiers and armed man o’ warsmen from many alien ships and lands—some time or other our possible enemies, our possible allies—but all keeping step with our own brave men in the name of a pictorial friendship and in the hope of an unbroken peace; above all paying this passing tribute to our city and our country. Less, in that it showed us the stripping off of the gauds and finery of war, bringing more directly home to us that war today will none of these, but must keep the human material of battle in ready fighting trim. Glory was marching in khaki and scorned all gold galloon. Over the same path as the civic procession of Tuesday came Military Glory in its ranked and regimented thousands, giving something of the thought that if called on to take to the trenches or march to the attack by the time it reached Washington’s arch, the men would be ready. Thus it gave two distinct sensations to the hundreds of thousands who watched it, outside the particular thrills that came when some well-remembered or much-admired division of the troopers came tramping grimly by.
Our Irish citizens enjoyed it immensely, for they knew when the “regulars” were passing that it was dotted all over with Irish faces; that it was the army that Andrew Jackson gloried in; that Phil Sheridan, Kearney, Meagher and a hundred other brilliant men of Irish blood and strain had led on fields of death. Was not their own 69th there swinging along as it had swung at any time in fifty years that the country called? It was, and gallantly held its own for drill and trim and soldier bearing. Did they not warm to the thought that the Irish volunteers were marching, men soldiering for the very love of it, and cherishing an olden hope that sometime, somewhere they might be allowed to charge a battery or storm a height for Ireland—Ireland far away, but Ireland ever near to their hearts. And this thought gave friendliness to their hail of the French marines and the French sailors, for the French had been Ireland’s friend as well as America’s in the old troubled times, and many a one lilted under his breath “Oh, the French are on the sea, says the Shan van Vocht” when the Gallic tri-color went dancing past. These thoughts made it seem tolerable that the English were in the line and went so far as to let them give the Germans a cheer or two, and extending various degrees of approval to Italians, Brazilians and Argentines. But the West Point cadets! There, the innate love of the fighting man by the fighting race found intimate appeal. Many the Irish captain, great in the battlefield, had learned the grim trade in that battalion, and now to see how fine and supple yet tense they seemed, how superbly they marched, how arrowlike their alignment, how wonderfully they wheeled or countermarched, and the bands playing through it all. It was a glorious day for all who took part and all who looked on.