Among the Soldiers of Fortune whose stories have been told in this book were men who are no longer living, men who, to the United States, are strangers, and men who were of interest chiefly because in what they attempted they failed.
(more…)
It is safe to say that to members of the younger generation the name of William Walker conveys absolutely nothing. To them, as a name, “William Walker” awakens no pride of race or country. It certainly does not suggest poetry and adventure. To obtain a place in even this group of Soldiers of Fortune, William Walker, the most distinguished of all American Soldiers of Fortune, the one who but for his own countrymen would have single-handed attained the most far-reaching results, had to wait his turn behind adventurers of other lands and boy officers of his own.
(more…)
In the Chinese-Japanese War the battle of the Yalu was the first battle fought between warships of modern make, and, except on paper, neither the men who made them nor the men who fought them knew what the ships could do, or what they might not do.
(more…)
This is an attempt to tell the story of Baron Harden-Hickey, the Man Who Made Himself King, the man who was born after his time.
If the reader, knowing something of the strange career of Harden-Hickey, wonders why one writes of him appreciatively rather than in amusement, he is asked not to judge Harden-Hickey as one judges a contemporary.
(more…)
Any sunny afternoon, on Fifth Avenue, or at night in the table d’hote restaurants of University Place, you may meet the soldier of fortune who of all his brothers in arms now living say is the most remarkable. You may have noticed him; a stiffly erect, distinguished-looking man, with gray hair, an imperial of the fashion of Louis Napoleon, fierce blue eyes, and across his forehead a sabre cut.
(more…)