Note 39 — Chapter XI · Otis and the War

For what he did on that occasion, Kenly ought to have had a medal of honor, which, except life insurance and a good education, is the finest legacy any government can enable a soldier to bequeath to his children. If the war had been backed by the sentiment of the whole country, as the Spanish War was, he would have gotten it. As it was, the only thing he ever got for it, so far as the writer is advised, was to have his name spelt wrong in an account of the incident in the only book wherein there has yet been attempted a record of the many deeds of splendid daring that marked the only war into which this nation ever blundered.39