ELEPHANT GRAY

It is recorded in the sacred annals of the Medes and Persians--so our friend the scholar in Semitic 12 informs us--that when Artaxerxes, king of all the world from the Euphrates to the Tigris, went to battle he armed the front line of his phalanges with a buffer of pugnacious elephants. On each elephant was a wild-eyed son of Japhet with a sharp goad and a rebel yell. The goad tickled the elephant's hide, the rebel yell tickled his musical sensibilities. He became imbued with the spirit of conquest and charged like a young Juggernaut or a Woolworth tower on wheels against the foe.

And, of course, as a correllary it must be added that when the embattled Cimmerians or Parthians or Lydians saw the charge of this heavy brigade, with its respective ears flapping like the weekly wash on a windy Monday morning, lifting its trunks as does the baggage-smasher before he drops them to the concrete pavement, and heaving its battleship-gray sides for lack of breath like a boat in a stormy sea, they--the embattled Cimmerians, Lydians or Parthians--dropped their spears and bows, and departed, swiftly but not silently, in the direction of Cathay or some port further East, where the climate is good, and warriors may enjoy a long, long rest.

Artaxerxes, and all the world between the Tigris and the Euphrates, are a far journey from Plattsburg via the Lackawanna and the Jersey City ferry. Yet we may, mounting on a convenient elephant, make the journey from one paragraph to the next.

At Plattsburg elephant-gray ponchos have been issued for our future officers. All reports indicate that they have fitted the wearers physically, spiritually, and artistically, as the glove fits the hand, or as the elephant's hide--for that matter--fits the elephant.

Perhaps if a platoon of regulation army top sergeants, weighing seven pud each with their shoes off, were invested with the new ponchos and put at the head of a bayonet charge, they might work the same terror on the modern Cimmerians as did Artaxerxes' now well-known elephants, even without the flapping ears and the heaving trunks. They might, given a good boost, bear their elephant-gray ponchos in a clattering charge all the way to Berlin, and end at one elephantine victory the war.

It is now to be expected that crocodile-green and gila-monster-pink will make their appearance in Flanders, side by side with serpent mottled and zebra striped. The armies may view with each other in sartorial battle for the most striking colors, and soldiers parade along Dead Man's Hill as civilians parade on Fifth Avenue. The familiar cloudblue, sand-brown, and leaf-green uniforms will be passe as are hoop skirts now. We may suppose an army clad in giraffe spots combatting victoriously at Potsdam, and taking time to change to ostrich-white and black before entering the capitol in triumph.

Only, to be frank, the suitability of elephant-gray to the purpose in hand might be questioned. Some men do bear strong similitude to an elephant weighing anchor when they essay a rush from skirmish line. Others advance more like the familiar kangaroo. Perhaps, all in all, rhinoceros-gray would suit best the complexion of a recruit.