The Salute.

A callow youth, privileged to write for one of the evening papers from Camp Grant, declares that "the salute must go," that "the American people are not given to permitting themselves to be lowered socially by any mark of deference."

We suggest that the individual writing this ignorant nonsense for a metropolitan paper be brought back and given a few rudimentary lessons in what the salute--either military or civilian--means. We do not know where he was bred, if he was bred at all, but it is time if he is to write at Camp Grant or elsewhere he learned that no man, American or otherwise, is "lowered socially" by any "mark of deference." A man is "lowered socially" by the neglect of marks of deference, not by yielding them.

The salute in the army--and this is true of all armies except the army that ran away before the Germans in Russia recently--is a symbol of the discipline without which an army is an ungovernable mob which a handful of real soldiers can put to rout. The young ignoramus who writes from Camp asks, "Why should an American citizen humble himself to every stripe or collar mark that indicates a grade higher in the service than himself?" The answer is that he does not humble himself. The salute is a mark of respect not given to the individual but to the rank, therefore to the system of which the democratic soldier is supposed to be an intelligent part, therefore the salute is in a sense a salute to one's self. The salute to the hat cord of the second lieutenant, the thin bar of the first lieutenant, is a salute to the principle of order, of discipline, of organized effort. It is therefore answered by the superior rank. Neither the private who salutes nor the major general who returns the salute has lowered himself a hair breadth, socially or any other way, any more than has a civilian who has doffed his hat to a woman, a white haired old man, or the flag of his country. ---Chicago Tribune.