CHAPTER XXIV
EXPERIENCES AS A GOVERNMENT CENSOR OF TELEGRAPH
The few years succeeding the great strike were ones of calm, peaceful tranquility. Each recurring November 1st, brought the initiation of Post Lyceums at all garrisons, in which the officers were gathered together twice a week, and war in all its phases was studied. We didn't exactly know where the war was coming from, but, still we boned it out. Old campaigns were fought over; the mistakes made by the world's greatest commanders, from Alexander the Great to Grant and Lee were pointed out; Kriegspiel was played; essays written and discussed, recommendations made as to ammunition and food supply; use of artillery in attack and defense; the proper method of employing the telegraph in the war; and a thousand and one things relative to the machine militaire were gone over. All this time we were slumbering over a smoldering volcano, and on February 16, 1898, the eruption broke loose; the good ship Maine was destroyed in Havana harbor, and the feelings of the people, already drawn to the breaking point by the inhuman cruelties of Spain towards her colonies near our own shores, burst with a vehemence that portended, in unmistakable language, the rending asunder of the once proud kingdom of Spain. The army wanted a war; the navy wanted it, the whole population wanted it and here it was within our grasp. It was the dawning of a new day for the United States; a new empire was being born in the Western hemisphere. The feverish preparations attendant upon the new conditions are of too recent date to need any sketching here.
When it was finally determined that the time had arrived for the assembling of the small but efficient regular army, I was stationed with my regiment at Fort Wayne, Michigan. Like all other troops, we were at the post ready for the start. The pistol cracked on the 15th of April, and on the 19th we started. Mobile, Alabama, was our objective where we arrived on the 22nd of the month. Here began the ceaseless preparation for the part the regiment was to play in the grand drama of war that was to follow, all this camp life and concentration being but the prologue.
The camp was a most beautiful one, the weather pleasant, and it was indeed a most inspiring sight to see the long unbroken lines of blue go swinging by, keeping absolute time and perfect alignment to the inspiring strains of some air like "Hot time in the old town to-night," or "The stars and stripes forever."
I had started in with my regiment and expected to remain on duty with it until the end of the war, sharing all its perils and hardships, doing my part in the fighting, and partaking of any of the renown it might achieve should the Dons ever be met. But "Man proposes and God disposes," and on the afternoon of May 21st, I was sitting in my tent correcting some manuscript when a very bright-eyed colored newsboy came along and said:
"Buy a paper, cap'n."
That was the day that a wild rumor had been in circulation that Sampson had met Cervera in the Bahama Channel and completely smashed him, so I laid down my manuscript and said: