property destroyed and the disruption of business in nearly half our territory. In this war we have faced nothing of this kind.

Nor has the fighting been anything like so savage and terrible as when both sides were Americans, the best soldiers in the world. Phil Sheridan sat on his horse beside Prince Charles when Metz was taken from the French in 1870. Looking at the serried lines of Germany's best soldiers he said to the Prince, "Give me two divisions of the Sedgwick sixth corps of the Union army and I could cut my way through your army of Prussians."

In the last hundred years the world has seen no other such fighting as was done by the Blue and Gray. The three most destructive battles in the last century outside the civil war were the battle of Waterloo in 1815, where the victors lost 20 per cent of their men; Vioville, between the Germans and the French in 1870, where the casualties were 20 per cent, and the battle of Plevno in 1870 where the Prussians lost 8 per cent in their battle with the Turks. But in the battle of Antietam the casualties of the victors were 23 per cent, at Gettysburg 20 and at Chickamauga 27 per cent.

Germany boasts of her "shock troops." In the civil war our boys were all "shock troops." And they were only boys. We see the few gray haired veterans with us to-day and forget that of those wonderful boys of 1860, 1,151,438 of them were mere striplings under 18 years old. But what terrible fighters they became! They were shock troops, for they knew but one way to fight. That was at close quarters after the roar of musketry, with bayonets and clubbed rifles.

The present method of long range shooting and trench fighting shows no such savage intensity of fighting or terrible slaughter as these men faced, and it knows no such losses.

At Gettysburg the First Minnesota lost 82 per cent of its men in fifteen minutes of the second day. At Petersburg the First Maine lost 70 per cent of its men in seven minutes. At Gettysburg the 141st Pennsylvania lost 76 per cent. And remember, these were killed or wounded and not a man "missing," as they didn't surrender.

And how about the Gray? First Texas at Antietam 82 per cent, 21st Georgia at Manassas 78 per cent, 26th North Carolina at Gettysburg 72 per cent, 6th Mississippi at Shiloh 71 per cent. They printed no casualty lists then. The day after one of these battles the whole Chicago Tribune would not have been big enough to hold the names.

An eminent British officer recently said, "The Americans still hold the record for hard fighting." And now the sons and grandsons of the men who shook hands at Appomattox, lineal descendants of the best infantry that ever marched on the globe, have had a chance to send the shivers of fear down the spine of the hun and America has repeated itself under the Stars and Stripes. But let us not forget the deeds of their heroic fathers who set a world record for terrific fighting that is not likely to ever be broken.

The author of this enlisted June 7, 1862, returned home July 3rd, 1865. Never asked for furlough. Was not absent from his regiment during term of service, except two days and three night, absence caused by the enemy being between him and the Union forces. The 78th Illinois was in active service from beginning to end of service, always at the front.