It would be a very simple thing for our government to issue a war medal after every campaign, to be given to every man who had served in it. It is a trinket of no intrinsic value, but the men who have the right to wear it have gained it through hard-fought battles and privations without number; they prize these trophies superlatively, and their families treasure them after they are dead. Our government now issues several medals, and so the campaign medal would be no departure from our custom. It is always a pleasure to see the respect paid to some old pensioner who carries an empty sleeve, as he enters a room or climbs into a ’bus in London, with the medal of the Crimea hanging to his coat. The fighting man in the field commands respect, no matter from what nation he may come, nor for what cause he is fighting. He is one atom of a great body that acts under the head and brain of one man, and to a certain extent he reflects the personality of his commander. But he is directly dependent upon the officers over him, and it rests largely with them whether he is to be considered a capable man or not. The British soldier has been taught to rely absolutely upon the judgment of his officers; and if he has been found wanting, the blame rests with them and not with him. No better war material could be desired than the khaki man fighting in South Africa, unless it be the man in the blue shirt fighting in the Philippines. This latter man represents the extreme of self-reliance in the field; to that he has been trained by his officers; for that his original intelligence and his Yankee inventiveness have peculiarly fitted him. With that self-reliance goes an American objection to being dispirited under failure. When he is down he does not stop regarding himself as “game”; under awful odds he cannot see sense in surrender, and if he does become a prisoner he schemes and frets and digs and plots to escape. He is probably the best fighting soldier in the world. CHAPTER IV. The Officers [Illustration: American volunteer officer.] To strike a comparison between the British and the American officer, we do not need to go further into their military career than their first schooling at the government institutions. The fact that the English cadet receives eighteen months’ training, ending with an indifferent examination, while the West Pointer is given four years of the most difficult work, both mental and physical, known to the military world, indicates the whole story.