Chapter 13

THE ARMY AND NAVY

Among the most delightful people I have met in America are the army and navy officers, graduates of West Point and Annapolis, well-bred, cultivated men, patriotic, open-hearted, and chivalrous. They are like our own class of men who answer to the American term of gentlemen. I am not going to tell you of their splendid ships, their training or uniform, but of a few of their idiosyncrasies. There is no dueling in the army. If two men have trouble at the academies they fight it out with bare fists, and in the army settle it in some other way, dueling being forbidden. Owing to the fact that all men are equal in America, the attitude of the officer to the civilian is entirely different. If a civilian strikes an officer in Germany the latter will cut him down with his saber and be protected in it, but here the man would be arrested and treated as any other criminal; in a word, the officer is a servant of the people, and stands with them. He has been trained to treat his men well, and they respect him. But while the officer is the people's servant and his salary in some part is paid by the humblest grocer's clerk, laborer, or artisan, the officer has a social position which, in the eyes of himself and the Government, makes him the social equal of kings and emperors; and here we see a strange fact in American life.

When a garrison is ordered to a town or city, people call to pay their respects. The grocer, who in being taxed aids in paying the officer's salary, is persona non grata. The grocer, milk dealer, shoe dealer, and retail dealers in general might call, but would not be received on cordial terms. The wife of the colonel might return the call of the grocer's wife if she made a good appearance, but the latter would under no circumstances be invited to a function at the camp or post. The undertaker, the dentist, the ice-man, the retail shoe man are under the ban. Certain kinds of business appear to have certain social rights. Thus a dentist would not be received, but the man who manufactures dentists' tools may be a leader among the "Four Hundred."

Strange complications arise. A young officer fell in love with a sergeant's daughter, and married her, as I learned from a well-known officer at the Army and Navy Club. This was serious enough, as there could be no intimacy between a commissioned and non-commissioned officer. The young man and his bride were ordered to a distant post, where the story of course followed them. All went well for a time. The bride sank her social inferiority in the rank of her husband, and the ladies of the post called on her, not as the sergeant's daughter but as the officer's wife. The mother of the bride finally decided to visit her, and thus became the guest of the officer, who was a lieutenant. Under ordinary circumstances it was the duty of all the ladies to call on the mother of the lieutenant's wife; but it so happened that she was the wife of a sergeant,