![]() ![]() Admiral “Hghting Bob” Evans, of Spanish-American War fame, did not think marines were an unmixed blessing on warships, writing bitterly: “The more Marines we have, the lower the intelligence of the crew.” To counter this opinion, Admiral David Glasgow Farragut of the Civil War Navy asserted stoutly that “a ship without Marines is like a garment without buttons,” and the thing that seems to have disturbed Congress the most about recent military reorganization proposals was the fear that they might in some way operate to whittle down the Corps’ size, importance, and independence of action. President Andrew Jackson once tried to abolish the Corps, root and branch, and in the 1890’s a similar move was killed by Congress. High officials have at times been of two opinions about the Marines. All in all, they are quite an organization a fact of which no one is more consistently aware than the Marines themselves.Īll in all, they are quite an organization a fact of which no one is more consistently aware than the Marines themselves. ![]() Also, their excellent red-coated band has played for Presidents of the United States from the earliest days ot the Republic. They have battled the Seminole Indians they once put down a riot in the Massachusetts state prison they broke in the doors of an engine house at Harpers Ferry and squelched John Brown’s abortive uprising of chattel slaves and on innumerable occasions they have subdued water front disorders arising from the excessive high spirits of regular navy men on shore leave. They have fought all of their country’s official enemies and a great many more who were national enemies only by temporary and impromptu arrangement, and the fighting has taken them to all parts of the globe, including many areas that they had never been formally invited to enter. ![]() The United States Marines are a very ancient fighting corps, covered with battle scars and proud of every one of them-so very proud, indeed, that they have developed an extremely high esprit de corps, which has been defined as a state of mind that leads its possessor to think himself vastly superior to members of all other military outfits. Members of the 1st Marine Division fighting Chinese forces in North Korea, December 1950. ![]()
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