Captain John Patrick Hurley of Company K, is an argument for the continued existence of the Irish as a people. He has everything that everybody loves in the Irish, as found even the reluctant tributes of their hereditary foes. He has a lean, clean handsome face and figure, and a spirit that responds to ideals patriotic, religious, racial, human, as eagerly and naturally as a bird soaring into its native air. He is perfectly willing to die for what he believes in. He would find that much easier than to live in a world of the cheap and commonplace. He always reminds me of the Easter-week patriots of Dublin, Patrick Pearse and Plunkett and MacDonagh. Like myself, and I may say all of us, he is in this war as a volunteer because he feels that it is a war against the tyranny of the strong, and a fight for the oppressed peoples of the earth. He is an able, practical man withal; an engineer, graduate of Cornell. He rules his company as their military commander, and the tribute of affection and loyalty they pay him is not lessened by the knowledge they have that breaches of discipline will meet with no mercy. Captain Merle-Smith of Company L came to us on the Border from Squadron A, and the intervening year of intimacy has not changed the judgment I uttered the first time I saw him: “If I had to pick out one man to spend a year with me on a voyage to Central Africa, there is the man I would select.” A big fellow—he and Reilly and Finn are our prize specimens—and big, like them, all the way through; and with the astonishing simplicity—in the old theological sense of the word as contrasted with duplicity—that one so often finds in big men. A college athlete (Princeton) and a lawyer, the contests of the campus and the bar have only whetted his appetite for more intense battles. From the time he joined us he has felt that the best opening for real soldier work is in this regiment. He is a 69th man by conviction, and he is as fond of his valiant Kerrymen in Company L as they are of him. I found no one in the recruiting period more zealous in increasing the numbers of the regiment and maintaining at the same time its characteristic flavor than Captain Van Santvoordt Merle-Smith. Captain William Doyle commanded Company M when we were called out, but since Captain Powers took the Headquarters Company he has been made Adjutant. It was a good choice. Captain Doyle is a college man (St. Francis Xavier) and an engineer by profession, and has been a National Guardsman for more years than one would guess. His training fits him for his new job. His mind is quick on the trigger, though the speed and accuracy with which it shoots a retort is rendered deceptive by his slightly humorous drawl in delivery. He is not one of the big fellows, but the big fellows think twice before taking him on.