"There, Colonel," said the General, twitching his moustache violently, "there it is again. You appear perfectly courteous—but that remark is cool contempt. I want you to understand," his tones louder, and gesticulations violent, "that you must take my strictures, tell the court that they must impose the sentence I direct, and leave conscience to me, and no d——d plea of insanity about it."
"General," observed the Colonel, rising, "I am the counsel of the prisoner as well as of the United States. I cannot and will not injure my own conscience, wrong the prisoner, or humiliate the Government by insisting upon a death penalty."
"Read my strictures to the court, and do your duty, sir, or I'll court-martial the whole d——d establishment. Go and re-assemble your court forthwith."
As he said this he handed a couple of closely written sheets of large sized letter-paper, tied with the inevitable red-tape, to the Colonel. The Colonel bowed himself out, and the chair in front of the pigeon-holes of the camp desk was again occupied by a living embodiment of red-tape.
The court was forthwith notified. It immediately met. The strictures were read, and in case of many sentences, especially towards the close, from necessity re-read by the Judge Advocate. After considerable laughter over the document, and some little indignation at the unwarranted dictation of "their commanding General," of which title the General had taken especial pains to remind them at least every third sentence, the court decided not to change the sentence, and directed the Judge Advocate to embody their
reasons for the character of the sentence in his report. The reasons, much the same as those stated to the General by the Judge Advocate, were reduced to writing, and duly forwarded, with the record signed and attested, to their "commanding General." That record, like some other court-martial records of the Division, has not since been heard of as far as the Judge Advocate or any member of the court is informed. The poor boy a few days afterwards entered a hospital, not again to rejoin his regiment. His application for discharge has not been heard of. With no prospect of being fit for active service—dying by inches in fact,—he is compelled at Government expense to follow the regiment in an ambulance from camp to camp, and on all its tedious marches.
The profanity in the foregoing chapter has doubtless disgusted the reader quite as much as its utterance did the Judge Advocate. And yet hundreds of the Division who have heard the General on hundreds of other occasions, the writer feels confident will certify that it is rather a mild mood of the General's that has been described. The habit is disgusting at all times. Many able Generals are addicted to the habit; but they are able in spite of it. That their influence would be increased without it, cannot be denied. It has been well said to be "neither brave, polite, nor wise." But now when the hopes of the nation centre in the righteousness of their cause, and thousands of prayers continually ascend for its furtherance from Christians in and out of uniform, how utterly contemptible! how outrageously wicked! for an officer of elevated position, to profane the Name under which those prayers are uttered, and upon which the nation relies as its "bulwark," "its tower of strength," a very "present help in this its time of trouble."
