If the troops run out of ammunition on the firing-line, they cannot retire, but must keep their line unbroken, even though they are all killed. At the battle of Spottsylvania Court House, in the Civil War, the regiment in which my brother Leander served was caught in exactly this position. They had been drawn up to defend a baggage train. They held their places, and loaded and fired until their ammunition was exhausted; and still they held their places under a rain of bullets from the enemy, until reënforcements came. Of that company, which went into the fight a hundred strong, eighty-four were killed, among them my brother. In war, the lives of a few hundred, or even a few thousand soldiers, count for nothing, if the position they are holding has a greater strategic value than their lives. When food runs short, it sometimes becomes strategically a good bargain to sacrifice the lives of a thousand men in a forage raid to bring in a thousand sheep. In such a case, a sheep is worth more than a man, because the sheep can be eaten, and the man cannot. There are some things in this world that we are able to know are absolutely wrong. Of these, nothing is surer than that it is wrong to forbid our army and navy officers the public expression of their opinions, which would give the country the benefit of their knowledge and experience. Not only this, but it is a great injustice to the officers of the Army and the Navy, for, if war comes, it is they who will have to stand on the firing-line--not the individuals of civilian officialdom. When, in the near future, our fleet is sent to intercept the on-coming superior fleet of an enemy, those officers who must stand on the bridge and at their posts on the decks--and go down with their ships--are the very men now gagged by civilian red tape. If they could speak, and tell you and me and all of us the truth and the naked truth, then very likely their lives could be saved, and the sacrifice of their ships and their crews avoided. If the actual truth about our defenselessness were generally appreciated, our whole people, as Antony said of the stones of Rome, "would rise and mutiny" against the legislative and bureaucratic officialdom and the fanatical peace propaganda that are teaching the people ignorance and folly while muting the tongues of those who should speak.