treatment, but the sergeant does not know anything about the
regulations--he gets the thing done. The sergeant may be twenty years
old or sixty--age does not count. The sergeant is a father to his
men--he regards them all as children--bad boys--and his business is to
make them brave, honorable and dutiful soldiers.

The sergeant is always the first man up in the morning, the last man to
go to bed at night. He knows where his men are every minute of the day
or night. If they are actually sick, he is both nurse and physician, and
dictates gently to the surgeon what should be done. He is also the
undertaker, and the digging of ditches and laying out of latrines all
fall to his lot. Unlike the higher officers, he does not have to dress
"smart," and he is very apt to discard his uniform and go clothed like a
civilian teamster, excepting on special occasions when necessity demands
braid and buttons.

He knows everything, and nothing. No wild escapade of a higher officer
passes by him, yet he never tells.

Now one might suppose that he is an absolute tyrant, but a good sergeant
is a beneficent tyrant at the right time. To break the spirit of his men
will not do--it would unfit them for service--so what he seeks to do is
merely to bend their minds so as to match his own. Gradually they grow
to both love and fear him. In time of actual fight he transforms cowards
into heroes. He holds his men up to the scratch. In battle there are
often certain officers marked for death--they are to be shot by their
own men. It is a time of getting even--and in the hurly-burly and
excitement there are no witnesses. The sergeant is ever on the lookout
for such mutinies, and his revolver often sends to the dust the head
revolutionary before the dastardly plot can be carried out. In war-time