A British colonel on a visit of inspection to, our Service of Supplies visited this project on the same day that I came. Radiating admiration and astonishment at every step and at every stop, he accompanied the young first lieutenant who was in personal charge of the warehousing scheme on a tour of his domain, which covered miles. When the round had been completed and the lieutenant had saluted and taken himself away the Britisher said to the chief regulating officer:
“I have never seen anything so perfectly devised as your plan of operation and distribution here. I take it that the young man who escorted me through is one of your great American managing experts. I imagine he must have been borrowed from one of those marvellous mail-order houses of yours, of which I have heard so much. One thing puzzles me though—he must have come here fresh from business pursuits, and yet he bears himself like a trained soldier.”
The chief regulating officer smiled a little smile.
“That man,” he said, “is an old enlisted man of our little antebellum Regular Army. He didn't win his commission until he came over here. Before that he was a noncom on clerical duty in the quartermaster's department, and before that he was a plain private, and as far as I know he never worked a day for any concern except our own Government since he reached the enlisting age.”
In addition to doing what I should say at an offhand guess was the work of ten reasonably active men, the colonel who supervises our Advance Section has found time since he took over his present employment to organise a brass band and a glee dub among his personnel, to map out and stage-manage special entertainments for the men, to entertain visitors who come officially and unofficially, to keep several thousand individuals busy in their working hours and happy in their leisure hours, and at frequent intervals to write for the benefit of his command special bulletins touching on the finer sides of the soldier's duties and the soldier's discipline. He gave me a copy of one of his more recent pronouncements. He called it a memorandum; I called it a classic. It ran as follows:
“1. The salute, in addition to being a soldier's method of greeting, is the gauge by which he shows to the world his proficiency in the profession, his morale and the condition of his discipline.
“2. For me the dial of a soldier's salute has three marks, and I read his salute more accurately than he himself could tell me.
“3. The three gradations are:
(a) I am a soldier; I know my trade or will know it very soon, and I will be a success as a soldier or a civilian, wherever I may be put.
(b) I do not know what I am and do not care, I only do what I am forced to do, and will never be much of a success at anything.