ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION. 



tying days into the hardest kind of hard work. There were 325 First Regi- 

 ment men guarding yellow fever hospitals; nursing yellow fever patients; 

 burying yellow fever dead. There were 300 of my men handling the heavi- 

 est kinds of stuffs; there were 300 more guarding prisoners in a deadly 

 camp, leaving less than 300 out of 1329 with the colors. If that is not a 

 demonstration that some one was trying to punish my regiment I know not 

 what could prove it. But they did not get a cry from my men, and Gen, 

 Shatter himself had to come and tell m ein the end that that was a splendid 

 regiment. 



I say to you that the volunteer soldiers are today, as they have been 

 since the foundation of this government, the hope of America. We do- 

 need an increase in the regular army, but we don't need 100,000 men, 50,000 

 is all that is necessary. 



We de not want to wipe out the National Guard, as the chairman of the 

 military committee says we ought to do. We do not wish to abolish it, 

 for I say to you that in the volunteer soldier there is superb grit. He 

 fights for love of country and nothing else, and he is the salvation of this 

 nation. You take the porfessional soldier, and while they did superbly in 

 Cuba, their tendency is all away from democracy. What sympathy have 

 men in a fort, kept away from contact with people, their daily life, their 

 struggles and sorrows. It is the tendency of their trade to separate them 

 from the simplicity of the home life from everything that makes America 

 what it is. So I say to you while we do need and must always have a cer- 

 tain body of men who shall be ready to hold things level while the volun- 

 teers are getting ready, we do not need a great standing army. It will be 

 a menace to the country. 



It is tbe government itself that is responsible for most of the trouble 

 that happens in transferring National Guard regiments into the United 

 States service. My regiment was ready in 24 hours and it took the govern- 

 ment, by reason of its miserable red tape, 20 days to muster us in. That 

 was not the fault of the National Guard; that's the fault of the Govern- 

 ment, of the war department. 



We went out 1458 strong, understanding that we were to have the full 

 number. The government cut us down to 1029. "We can't take any 



