approach to parity. Men may even differ as to which is the more important; but such difference, in this question, which is purely military, is not according to knowledge. In equal amounts, mobile offensive power is always, and under all conditions, more effective to the ends of war than stationary defensive power. Why, then, provide the latter? Because mobile force, whatever shape it take, ships or men, is limited narrowly as to the weight it can bear; whereas stationary force, generally, being tied to the earth, is restricted in the same direction only by the ability of the designer to cope with the conditions. Given a firm foundation, which practically can always be had, and there is no limit to the amount of armor-mere defensive outfit-be it wood, stone, bricks, or iron, that you can erect upon it; neither is there any limit to the weight of guns, the offensive element, that earth can bear; only they will be motionless guns. The power of a steam navy to move is practically unfettered; its ability to carry weight, whether guns or armor, is comparatively very small. Fortifications, on the contrary, have almost unbounded power to bear weight, whereas their power to move is nil; which again amounts to saying that, being chained, they can put forth offensive power only at arm's length, as it were. Thus stated, it is seen that these two elements of sea warfare are in the strictest sense complementary, one possessing what the other has not; and that the difference is fundamental, essential, unchangeable-not accidental or temporary. Given local conditions which are generally to be found, greater power, defensive and offensive, can be established in permanent works than can be brought to the spot by fleets. When, therefore, circumstances permit ships to be squarely pitted against fortifications not merely to pass swiftly by them-it is only because the builders of the shore works have not, for some reason, possibly quite adequate, given them the power to repel attack which they might have had. It will not be asserted that there are no exceptions to this, as to most general rules; but as a broad statement it is almost universally true. "I took the liberty to observe," wrote Nelson at the siege of Calvi, when the commanding general suggested that some vessels might batter the forts," that the business of laying wood against walls was much altered of late." Precisely what was in his mind when he said "of late," does not appear; but the phrase itself shows that the conditions which induced any momentary equality between ships and forts, when brought within range, were essentially transient. As seaports, and all entrances from the sea, are stationary, it follows naturally that the arrangements for their defense also should, as a rule, be permanent and stationary, for as such they are strongest. deed, unless stationary, they are apt not to be permanent, as was conclusively shown in the late hostilities, where all the new monitors, six in number, intended for coast defense, were diverted from that object and despatched to distant points; two going to Manila, and stripping the Pacific coast of protection, so far as based upon them. This is one of the essential vices of a system of coast defense dependent upon ships, even when constructed for that purpose; they are always liable to be withdrawn by an emergency, real or fancied. Upon the danger of such diversion to the local security Nelson insisted, when charged with the guard of the Thames in 1801. The block ships (stationary batteries), he directed, were on no account to be moved for any momentary advantage; for it might very well be impossible for them to regain their carefully chosen positions, when wanted there. Our naval scheme in past years has been seriously damaged, and now suffers, from two misleading conceptions: one that a navy is for defense primarily, and not for offensive war; the other, consequent mainly upon the first, that the monitor, being stronger defensively than offensively, and of inferior mobility, was the best type of war ship. The Civil War, being, so far as the sea was concerned, essentially a coast war, naturally fostered this opinion. The monitor, in smooth water, is better able to stand up to shore guns than ships are, which present a larger target; but, for all that, it is more vulnerable, both above water and below, than shore guns are, if these are properly distributed. It is a hybrid, neither able to bear the weight that fortifications do, nor having the mobility of ships; and it is, moreover, a poor gun-platform, in a sea-way. There is no saying of Napoleon's known to the writer more pregnant of the whole art and practice of war than this, "Exclusiveness of purpose is the secret of great successes and of great operations." If, therefore, in maritime war, you wish permanent defenses for your coasts, rely exclusively upon stationary works, if the conditions admit, not upon floating batteries which have the weaknesses of ships. If you wish offensive war carried on vigorously upon the seas, rely exclusively upon ships that have the qualities gate displacement; and that although, from of ships and not of floating batteries. We had in the recent hostilities 26,000 tons of the weakness of the Spanish defenses, we shipping sealed up in monitors, of compara- were able to hug pretty closely most parts tively recent construction, in the Atlantic of the Cuban coast. Had the Spanish guns and the Pacific. There was not an hour, at Santiago kept our fleet at a greater disfrom first to last, I will venture to say, that tance, we should have lamented still more we would not gladly have exchanged the bitterly the policy which gave us sluggish whole six for two battle-ships of less aggre- monitors for mobile battle-ships. THE NIGHT AFTER SAN JUAN. STORIES OF THE WOUNDED ON THE FIELD AND IN THE HOSPITAL. BY STEPHEN BONSAL S we gazed upon it from afar, the unceasing "rup rup" of the regular, almost mechanical musketry fire that came sweeping down from the Spanish position. And with this inspiration, in one place, right W where the San Juan fort was by the fort, the human wave rose and ran perched resembled nothing out into a point. You could count on the so much as a great wave sweeping slowly fingers of your hand the brave men who were in from the sea. Before our eyes, in some leading it, and even as you counted they grew places, the great wave grew smaller and fewer, the arms of some going wildly up in thinner, and now and again would subside the air as they fell. Then, with a weak and and seemed about to dissolve altogether, as tired cheer, half a dozen men came out upon though robbed of all its force and impetus the open ground in front of the blockhouse, by the ragged reefs. It seemed even, for looking strangely tall against the sky line. moments, as though the waves must fall back, I expected to see them mowed down, they our thin, broken line recede, for the impos- were so pitifully few, but the Spaniards had sible had been attempted, and the fire that fled. In no instance did our line come into came from the blockhouse was more than closer contact with the retreating Spaniards flesh and blood could stand against. Still than from 100 to 150 yards, and I am afraid the scattered bunches of men kept moving the artists who have pictured the scene wearily up the hill, with their necks stretched out eagerly and dragging their lagging bodies. But the little clumps of blue which did not advance, which could not move, the heaps of dead and wounded, which in their blue clothing stood out so strikingly against the green background of the jungle grasses, were growing more numerous with every smokeless volley that came from the blockhouse. Truly, at this crisis, it seemed as though the blue waves would not reach the hilltop, as though the men who had fallen upon the slopes had fallen in vain. Then the bugle note "to the charge" was heard again, over the valley and up the hill; three of the buglers of the Sixth Infantry alone, gave their last dying breath to this trumpet call, which shall never die away in the memory of their countrymen. It was heard again and again, above differently have succumbed to the temptation to draw the conventional scene of a hand-to-hand conflict, and I am sure they have failed to represent things as they were. A PRIVATE OF THE SIXTH. The leader of this thin and scattered line, this forlorn hope that persisted in advancing through the leaden hail, was Lieutenant Ord of a family that has given many a brave. soldier to our country, but none braver than he. There raced with him, running neck and neck the gauntlet of death, a colorbearer of the Sixteenth Infantry, carrying his great flag unfurled to the battle breeze; a private of the Sixth Infantry; and a little. flute-player of the Sixth-a boy of sixteen, looking, however, barely fourteen, who, when the regiment came out of the jungle and the THE UNITED STATES FLAG AND REGIMENTAL COLORS OF THE SIXTEENTH REGULAR INFANTRY-THE FIRST AMERICAN FLAGS RAISED ON SAN JUAN HILL. colors of the regiment were uncapped and all made ready for the assault, had been ordered back to the hospital, but had concluded to remain with the "other fellows," as he told me. The young private of the Sixth was an Ohio boy who joined the regiment just before it left Fort Thomas for the war. He ran by Ord's side, the first on the rush line throughout the terrible climb, only to fall about twenty yards short of the crest of the hill. A deadly pallor spread over his face, and Ord, who had turned to one side in answer to a faint cry from his brave companion, saw that the wound was a mortal one. My poor fellow," he said, for the moments they had lived together during the charge had bound them with bonds of steel. "My poor fellow, I can do nothing for you." 66 "I didn't call you back for anything like that, Lieutenant. I'm done for. But I thought you'd better take my steel nippers; there may be still another wire fence beyond the crest of the hill, and I won't be there to cut it for you." In a few minutes he died where he had fallen, but not before he had heard the bugle notes that called upon our scattered men to assemble in the blockhouse and the trenches that they had wrested from the Spaniards, and not before his eyes had seen the Stars and Stripes waving over the Spanish fort. And in one thing more his death was merciful: he never knew that the young officer whom he worshiped with pure, unselfish idolatry had fallen, like himself, in the hour of victory, and lay there stiff and cold, not fifty yards away. "IT WAS A MAN." A fat sergeant creeping cautiously along upon his hands and knees came in to my bomb-proof hollow, and asked me if I had any grub in my haversack or water in my canteen to spare. And when I gave him the canteen mechanically, he shook it, and hearing how little water there was left, gave it back to me and began to lecture. "You're a pretty soldier," he said, "giving away your canteen with just enough water in it to cook coffee with; it may be a long time before you get any more water, and you had better keep that." But I didn't; I drank it. All the talk about water had made me thirsty. And, after all, I did not come out so badly; the sergeant's talk of cooking coffee was purely fantastic-there was very little coffee cooked until the white flag went up on the 3d, and of those who attempted it, many paid for their temerity with their lives. I now followed the sergeant, on hands and knees, to the little hollow in the hill where he and his companions, a mixed crowd of men from one cavalry and three infantry regiments, were waiting for the arrival of the intrenching tools which never came. They talked about grub, torn coats, broken shoes and pickaxes, just as if they had not come out unscathed from the most deadly charge that American troops ever engaged in. And I listened all ears and attention, but they could not quite hold my attention, because of an uncanny thing that lay there upon the ground about six feet away. When the sergeant saw that my eyes were riveted upon it, his gaze shifted uneasily from it to me, and then the conversation began to flag. I look at it again, it seems to be a door-mat, all smeared with blood and gore; then the door-mat seems to be covered with the Spanish uniform, and at last I spring to my feet and say, "What is that, Sergeant? Why, it moves!" 66 "It's a man, or it was a man." The sergeant shifts from one foot to the other, and glances from one of his comrades to another; but the whole detachment look a little sheepish and out of countenance. Finally, one man spoke up: "No, it wasn't a man, ," he said; it was a murdering, cowardly scoundrel. He was lying wounded on the edge of the trench where he had fallen in attempting to escape, when Lieutenant Ord of our company ran past him toward the blockhouse; and seeing that the fellow would be killed by the fire from his own men, he turned to two of us and said, 'Take that Spaniard, and carry him behind the blockhouse, out of the fire.' The scoundrel listened, then pulling out a pistol, he poked it in our lieutenant's face and blew out his brains, killing on the spot the brave boy that we had been following all the day, who, even in the moment of victory, had thought how he might save the scoundrel's life. The Spaniard then fell back smiling like a devil, but I reckon we knocked that expression out of his face. Yes, that's him, though his own mother would not know him; we clubbed him to death with the butts of our rifles." THE LITTLE FLUTE-PLAYER AGAIN. When I crept on, I found the little fluteplayer sitting by young Ord's body, at the place where we afterwards buried him, by the trenches which the Twenty-fourth Infantry subsequently occupied. The little chap, a The little chap, a gray-eyed, freckled-face boy, sat at the feet of the officer for whose approving smile he had shown such courage that day. Then an officer of the Sixth came by, and in all kindness, for it was no place for children, scolded the boy and ordered him back to the hospital. And then the little fellow told how it had happened. "I was going back," he said; "I wanted to go back to the hospital and look after Colonel Egbert when he fell wounded, and I was doing no good at the front, for my flute is ruined with the mud and the rain. But just as I started back I heard Mr. Ord say, Now all the boys who is brave will follow me; all the boys who's brave, follow me!' and then he rushed ahead, and kept that up for 'bout half an hour, resting a little while, and then rushing ahead. And every time he started up, he would shout back, 'Now, all the boys who's brave will follow me!' So all the boys followed him, and as I was lighter I got farther ahead than most." "Weren't you afraid, sonny?" inquired the officer, grinning with delight. "I was very fearful, sir, but I wasn't afraid." While we were talking, a colonel of cavalry came riding up the hill as far as he could go, and then dismounting came on on foot. His face was stern and ashen, with the look of a man who has seen his son die at his side not an hour before. He listened to the little flute-player, and smiled with pleasure at the boy's brave answer. "Ah, yes, he said, "there are many brave boys left, and you will make a good soldier some day," and patting the little fellow on the shoulder, he went on.* THE WOUNDED IN THE JUNGLE. After the rain and during the hour of darkness before the moon rose, in all the fullness of its warm tropical beauty, over the battlefield, the wounded, who had been crouching behind the bushes near which they fell or in the little dressing-stations directly behind the firing line, where they had been cared for as far as the devotion of their comrades and the courage of the surgeons and the hospital stewards could supply the absolute want of proper medical and surgical supplies, were placed on blankets caked with mud and wet from the recent rain, and carried down the hillside under a dropping fire from the enemy, and back along the forest road which led * The last I heard of the young flute-player he was very ill with the fever at Montauk; if he died, I believe, with the cavalry colonel, that we have indeed lost a brave soldier. A field hospital near El Caney, directly behind the firing line. From a photograph kindly loaned by the Chicago" Record." ants, picked off by Spanish sharpshooters, to whom it seemed that the red cross which flew over the hospital station, and which was worn by those who were charged with the care of the wounded, was indeed a shining and attractive mark and one rather sought after than avoided. But, of course, appearances may have been deceptive, and the whole valley may have been swept with the fire which proved so destructive about the hos attack of the Spaniards to drive our men back and retake their lost position, the search for the dead and the wounded this evening had to be confined to a very limited area, and was only as thorough as the shortness of the time for which men could be spared from the colors permitted. The jungle and the great fields of long grass were not searched, and thus many of the wounded were not discovered until the following day, and quite a num |