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.