OCR Text |
Show THE SUCCESSFUL SOLDIER. How Colonel Gaedki's analysis of General Ku- :H ropatkin reminds one of another famous Captain. H "A through and through honorable man, bene- H volent, personally brave, admirable in the quiet il of his work room1, simple in his tastes, an excel- I lent administrator; Kuropatkin lacks that glance B that penetrates the darkness of a situation, quick decision, immediate correlation of means, and, before all, the unsympathetic will that alone B triumphs in war, that without compassion uses the B bodies of his men in taking their last and best B to compass victory. Such men as Kuropatkin are B not few in the Russian army, and their qualities B attach the soldier to his flag, but they do not win B victories. No leader is so bad as he who will not S take a risk." fl That reads like a pen picture of General B George B. McOlellan as he was in 1861-62 and '63. B Personally brave, through and through honor- B able, splendid administrative abilities, with all H the qualities that draw the soldier to the general H and the flag, but a dead .failure In offensive war- B fare. fl The way he moulded the raw recruits into a fl glorified army was magnificent, but then his over fl cautiousness began. He held his army in dread fl of McGruders wooden guns for months; when N he was forced to start, he protested that he was M not ready, but must have reinforcements; when H at last he struck the enemy and won, and the II spires of Richmond were in plain sight, and his II division commanders, especially Kearney, were in- II sistant upon an advance, his constitutional cau- 'II tion, his fear of "taking a risk," overcame him fl and ho ordered a retreat. Then followed the sev- H en days' battle back to Harrison's landing, and H the nation knew the advance had been a failure. fl But his soldiers clung to him and still shout for H him. B But suppose Grant, or Sheridan, or Sherman or B Thomas had been in his place at Malvern Hill H Suppose Stonewall Jackson had b,een in his place B By the way, General Lee had many of the qualities quali-ties of General McClellan. He had the ability, the personal courage that was with him as a matter of course, those qualities that drew soldiei'S to him with a kind of adoration, but he never won a fight after Stonewall Jackson died. Again, at Antietam, when the enemy was so broken that the soldiers in the ranks saw the situation sit-uation and clamored for the chance to sweep the field, McClellan shook his head and refused to hurl his forces forward upon the spent enemy, which might have ended the war. He would not take a risk; he was thinking of the rigid rules of tho books and did not stop to reflect that, in tho crisis of a battle, Napoleon made his own rules on the instant and that the result was no enemy could stand before him for eighteen years, until his star went into final eclipse. When Pickett's charge at Gettysburg was turned back in disaster, General Hancock, grievously griev-ously wounded as he was, sent a message to General Gen-eral Meade recommending that an advance be made all along the Union lines. General Meade's caution would not risk a movement of the kind with his tired army worn out by three days' fighting. fight-ing. But Hancock's intuition was clear. He knew there were two tired armies, and that the enemy was in far sorer straits than the Union army; moreover, he had a belief that the ammunition ammuni-tion of the enemy was about exhausted, which was true. The difference between Hancock and McClellan McClel-lan was, with the latter he would not cross a stream until a bridge was constructed, and with engineering ability the structure when completed would have been perfect and a thing of beauty, but the enemy would have been a hundred miles I away. Hancock would, without a bridge or pontoons, pon-toons, 'have forded or swam the river and engaged the enemy. The first word that was heard from Grant when ho started out with an independent command ras the summons, "Immediate and unconditional surrender" to Buckner, and after that he never struck an enemy that he did not destroy him or take him in. His was a gentle nature, but there ws no "compassion" in his warfare. |