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104
YAUCO TO LAS MARIAS

Major Egan, brigade-surgeon; Captain Buchanan, Collector-of-the-Port at Mayaguez; Captain Davison, brigade-quartermaster; Captain Hutcheson, assistant adjutant-general; and Captain Elkins,* Lieutenant Byron, and Lieutenant Summerlin, aides-de-camp.

II

In connection with the present writer's expressed opinion regarding the relative practical value of regulars and volunteers in modern warfare, the following excerpt from the Chicago Record of November 3, 1898, is worth reading.

Captain Avid Wester, the Swedish officer who accompanied the American army in Cuba, in order to study the war, has just returned to Sweden. During his stay in Gothenburg he was interviewed, and he seems now to have a more sympathetic view of the Americans — the volunteers excepted — than former reports indicated. Captain Wester greatly praised the treatment he had received from all the American officers, and the bravery of the Americans in the regular army. "Of the 18,000 men under the command of General Shafter," he says, "only 4,000 were volunteers or militiamen; the rest consisted of regulars, which had had an average service of six years on the borders of the Indian territory. They were very good and well-

* Wounded at battle of Hormigueros.