The Bald Campaigner was looking over the tops of his spectacle lenses,
silent, obviously wise, a thing of beauty.
“Do you approve the punishment of General Jacob Smith, who was
dismissed from the army for barbarism?” asked the Timorous Reporter.
“Doubtless you remember the incident.”
“My approval,” said the great soldier, “is needless and of no
significance. I have long been on the retired list myself, and am not
the reviewing officer in this case. I think General Smith’s punishment
just, if that’s what you want to know. He committed a serious
indiscretion. As a commander of troops in the island of Samar he gave
to a subordinate the following oral instructions:
“‘I want no prisoners. I wish you to kill and burn; the more you kill
and burn the better you will please me.’ He said, further, that he
wanted all persons killed who were capable of bearing arms and were in
actual hostilities against the United States—I am quoting the Secretary
of War—and, in reply to a question by his subordinate, asking for an
age limit, designated it as ten years.
“All this was highly improper and unmilitary. It is customary
in matters of so great importance for the commander to give his
instructions in the form of written orders—a good commander is without
a tongue.
“I am no great literary genius, but in the matter of military orders
I know a hawk from a handsaw by the handsaw’s teeth. Suppose General
Smith’s orders (written orders) had read like this:
“‘It is thought that it will be to the advantage of the expedition
in point of celerity of movement, and will simplify the problem of
supply, if the column be not encumbered with prisoners. The commander
of the expedition will not be unmindful of the military advantages
that flow from the infliction of as many casualties upon the enemy as
is practicable with the small force that he commands and the evasive
character of the enemy; nor will he overlook the need of removing
by fire such structures and supplies as are incompatible with the
interests of the United States, or inconsistent with professions of
amity on the part of the island’s inhabitants, or conducive to the
prosperity of those in rebellion. No person engaged in hostilities
against the United States will, of course, be suffered to plead sex or
age in mitigation of such mischances as the fortunes of war may entail,
provided, however, that no non-combatants of either sex under the age
of ten years shall under any circumstances be put to death without
authority from these headquarters; the traditional benevolence of the
American army must not be impaired.’
“Sir, if General Smith had issued an order like that he would to-day be
a popular hero and an ornament to the active list of the army.”
Waving his remaining arm with a gesture singularly cogent and
convincing, the Bald Campaigner ceased and marched against a hostile
bottle near by. After study of the suppositious “order” in his
stenographic notes, the reporter ventured the opinion that the
difference between it and the oral instructions actually given was
mainly one of expression. The Bald Campaigner said in reply:
“Expression is everything. An army officer should be a master of
expression, as a baseball pitcher should be a master of delivery. The
straight throw and the curved throw carry the ball to the same spot,
but consider the different effect upon the fortunes of the pitcher.
What General Smith lacked was not heart, but style. He was not cruel,
but clumsy. His words were destitute of charm. His blundering tongue
had succeeded only in signifying his fitness to be thrown to the
civilian lions.”
The reporter hazarded a belief that the General’s instruction to make
Samar “a howling wilderness” was brutal exceedingly.
“Certainly it was,” assented the Bald Campaigner, “an officer of
refinement and taste would have said: ‘It will be found expedient to
operate against the enemy’s material resources.’ There is never a
military necessity for coarse speech.
“As to devastation—did you mention devastation?—that is the purpose of
war. War is made, not against the bodies of adult males, but against
the means of subsistence of a people. The fighting is incident to the
devastation: we kill the soldiers because they protect their material
resources—get between us and the fields that feed them, the factories
that clothe them, the arsenals that arm them. We cannot hope to kill
a great proportion of them at best; the humane thing is to overcome
them by means of hunger and nakedness. The earlier we can do so, the
less effusion of blood. Leave the enemy his resources and he will fight
forever. He will beget soldiers faster than you can destroy them.
“Do you cherish the delusion that in our great civil war, for example,
the South was subdued by killing her able-bodied males who could bear
arms? Look at the statistics and learn, to your astonishment, how small
a proportion of them we really did kill, even before I lost my arm.
“The killing was an incident. I speak of the latter part of the
conflict, when we had learned how to conduct military operations.
As long as our main purpose was bloodshed we made little progress.
Our armies actually guarded the homes and property of the men they
were sent to conquer—the very men that were fighting them, and who,
therefore, assured of the comfort and safety of their families,
continued fighting with cheerful alacrity. If we had continued that
rose-water policy they might have fought us to this day.”
The reporter involuntarily glanced at a calendar on the wall, and the
war oracle continued:
“Wisdom came of experience: we adopted the more effective and more
humane policy of devastation. With Sherman desolating the country from
Atlanta to Goldsborough and Sheridan so wasting the Shenandoah Valley
that he boasted the impossibility of a crow passing over it without
carrying rations, the hopes of Confederate success went up in smoke.
“And,” concluded the hairless veteran, rising and opening the door
as a delicate intimation that there was nothing more to say, “I beg
leave to think that the essential character of the _Ultima Ratio_ is
not permanently obscurable by the sentimental vagaries of blithering
civilians such as you have the lack of distinction to be.”
The Timorous Reporter retired to his base of operations and the
war-drum throbbed no longer in his ear.