Charles King - A Soldier's Trial - An Episode of the Canteen Crusade

Colonel Stone, who was now in command at Minneconjou, had known the Rays for years and was firmly their friend. Without so much as a hint from any source, he had divined that Sandy's low spirits were not the result of that bullet wound. He could not but note the solicitude with which his cavalry friend and oft-time fellow-campaigner regarded the silent young soldier, his eldest son. Colonel Stone had suggested at first that Sandy be put at surveying the reservation – something to keep him long hours each day in the open air. But barely six months had elapsed since the Engineers, under orders from department headquarters, had completed with chain, rod and transit thorough plotting of the six mile square, to the end that a very finely finished map was received almost at the time the colonel first broached the subject. Sandy could not yet take part in the sharp mounted drills that were his father's delight. Something had to be done to give him measurably congenial occupation. He could not play tennis, croquet or billiards. He would not play poker or find solace in Scotch highballs. He might have derived some comfort from reading and study, but Priscilla was beset with desire to prescribe his reading and guide his studies, for Priscilla, being several years his senior in age and many volumes his superior in reading, was ever mindful of the mission which no conscientious woman should be without. Priscilla had thought to start a school for the children of the garrison, but found that many of the elders were driven every day to town and its high school, while most of the mites were corraled each morning in the basement of the post chapel, pupils of a sergeant schoolmaster whose success had been quite remarkable, so much so that parents were reluctant – and their progeny rebellious – when other and more modern methods, Priscilla's, were suggested. It must be owned that the little ones from the start found Miss Sanford unsympathetic, if not impossible. Children love being catechized as little as do their elders, and they resented it that this somewhat prim, yet by no means unprepossessing, spinster should consider it her duty and her privilege to cross-question them as to their infantile responsibilities and, all uninvited, to undertake supervision of their noisy sports. Finding no opening for a day school, Miss Sanford had sought to interest the weans in an afternoon reading class. The first day or two the major's spacious quarters were well filled, so were the children with alluring goodies they could thoroughly appreciate. But when sermons began to take the place of sandwiches, and moral admonitions and questionings were administered in lieu of lemonade and lady-fingers, Miss Sanford's kindergarten dissolved in air and the would-be gentle monitress in disappointed tears. Uncle Will had whimsically striven to console her with the promise of better luck when school stopped in June, but Aunt Marion had smilingly though silently shaken her head. She knew Priscilla's propensities of old. She had convictions, said Aunt Marion, and theories as to how children should be taught to see the serious side of life. Priscilla was suffering from an accumulation of pent-up zeal and enthusiasm that was yet to find an outlet.

Then one day the outlet came.

Lieutenant Parker, "Exchange officer," so-called, was suddenly ordered to duty at West Point, and Colonel Stone asked Sandy Ray if he would take his place. "Strictly speaking," said he, "I should name one of my own officers, but I have other work for all of them, and lots of it. You have really very little else just now that you can do, except, perhaps, go to stables."

Now, if there was one institution more than another at Minneconjou against which Priscilla Sanford had set her seal, it was the post Exchange. In all her months of residence under Uncle Will's, the major's, roof, never once had the others there sheltered forgotten the day of her first acquaintance with the subject. Sandy was still beyond seas, but Billy, Junior, was of the household when, just as they took their place at table for luncheon, the husband and father spoke:

"Maidie wife, they have some capital cider at the Canteen and I ordered some sent over."

Miss Sanford looked up inquiringly over her poised spoonful of soup.

"The – Canteen?" she asked.

"Yes. The Post Exchange, it is called officially. It's the post shop, restaurant, club, amusement hall, etc.," answered the head of the house, while Marion, his wife, glanced just a trifle nervously at her niece.

"But why – Canteen? It isn't, is it, a – bar?" And Miss Sanford's tone betrayed the depth of her disapprobation of the name.

"Yes, and no," said Uncle Will pleasantly, his dark eyes twinkling under their heavy brows and lashes. He rather liked to have 'Cilla mount her successive hobbies, and thought it better, as a rule, to let her air her theories first in the sanctity of the family circle. "After experimenting a hundred years or so we found it wiser to prescribe the drinks as well as the meats of our men, and to provide a place for them at home where they can have rational amusement and refreshment, rather than send them out into the world where they get the worst of everything."

"But, uncle, do you mean you let – you encourage – these young soldiers to – drink?" And the slender gold chain of Miss Sanford's intellectual pince nez began to quiver, as did the lady's sensitive nostrils.

"Encourage? No! Let? Yes, so long as it is nothing but sound beer or light wine – things we buy for them from the most reliable dealers and provide them practically at cost. You see they have their own clubroom, and billiards, checkers, chess, dominoes, coffee, cake and sandwiches. It keeps them here. It helps and contents them. They can't drink more than is good for them."

"Is it good for them that they should drink – at all?" demanded Priscilla.

"Possibly not. The ascetic in everything would be, physically perhaps, the ideal soldier. But precious few soldiers are ascetics, though many are total abstainers."

"Then why not all, since it is best for so many?"

"Because, 'Cilla, a large number refuse to be abstainers, and we can't make them. They won't enlist or serve if such conditions are imposed. If forbidden to use mild and carefully selected stimulant here they will go elsewhere and get the vilest the frontier can furnish, to the ruin of their stomachs, reputation and moral nature. We teach temperance – not intolerance."

But Priscilla had been reared in the shadow of the stanch old Calvanistic church and the strictest of schools.

"I – cannot see how you dare place such temptation in their way," said she. "You thereby take their souls in the hollow of your hand and become responsible – Oh!" – with a shudder of genuine distress and repugnance – "I knew – I had heard – there was drinking; but I never supposed it was countenanced, encouraged by – by those who ought to be their shield against such temptation and trouble." And here Priscilla's words were oddly reminiscent of the editorial columns of the Banner of Light and certain other most excellent organs of the Prohibition element.

"We do it to keep them from vastly worse temptation and trouble, Priscilla," said the veteran soldier kindly, and signaling Marion not to interpose. "You are right, dear, in the abstract, but we have to deal with men as we find them. We would be glad indeed of ideals, but the ideal doesn't, as a rule, enlist."

"The Bible teaches us it stingeth like an adder," said Priscilla solemnly, with suggestive glance at Billy, Junior, whom she but yesterday had rebuked for sipping claret at the colonel's dinner.

"The Bible also tells us Who turned water into wine at a certain marriage feast," said Uncle Will, his mustache twitching.

Whereat Priscilla flushed; the tears started to her eyes; she arose and left the table, her soup unfinished. It was one thing to quote the Scriptures in support of her views; it was quite another to array them on the other side. When Aunt Marion went to Priscilla's room a little later, with a tray of tea and comfits and a word of gentle expostulation, she found her niece in anything but melting mood. To Priscilla's mind such argument as Uncle Will's was impious. To Aunt Marion's suggestion that at least it was from like authority with her own, Priscilla could find no better reply than "That's different."