There is a general idea that such populous states as New York and Pennsylvania lack state pride, particularly in the sense of the southern states; but any state, whose National Guardsmen were numerous enough to form a complete division on the new war footing, had the advantage of the unity of sentiment of the old family, which does not have to include strangers at its board. The 28th's deeds were Pennsylvania's. It stood proudly and exclusively for Pennsylvania with her wealth and prosperity and all her numerous colleges, large and small, from Allegheny in the northwest to the University of Pennsylvania. The men were evidently capable of eating three and four square meals a day, and they looked as if they were used to having them when they were at home. "What about politics?" the critic always asks about any National Guard division. If there were politics in the 28th it was so mixed up with marching and fighting--and the men of the 28th were always doing one or the other when I saw them--that it was unrecognizable to one so unused to politics as the writer. Certainly, it was a good kind of politics, I should say, in that Pennsylvania had taken a downright interest in her National Guard, which was now bearing fruit. The 28th's commander, Major-General Charles H. Muir, was a man of equanimity and force, who had the strength of character, on occasion, to stand up to an Army staff when he knew that its orders were impracticable. The staff respected him for his confidence in the judgment of the man on the spot. The 28th's losses both in officers and in men in that excoriating progress from the Vesle to the Aisne had been the price of a gallantry which was a further reproof to the scepticism in certain quarters about the National Guard. Officers who had been killed or wounded had been replaced by young men who were often from the training camps though not Pennsylvanians; and in the fierce illumination of battle much had been learned about the qualities of the survivors. Some of these who had hitherto been called politicians had entirely overcome the aspersion. Others who had worn themselves out physically might be given a period of recuperation even if the division had none. The 28th had been indeed battle-tried in all that the word means. If it could have had two weeks before the Meuse-Argonne in which to digest its lessons, this would have been only fair to it as a division: though probably its determination would have been no stronger.