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[for the Richmond Daily Dispatch]
a badge for the soldiers — important !

Mr. Editor:--Allow me to suggest, as a means of readily marking the distinction between our soldiers and the enemy's attaching a large white star — made of linen or bleached cotton--on the coat-sleeve of the right arm of our men, midway between the elbow and the wrist. It can be readily seen at a great distance. Better to have it on the arm than the body or the head, because less dangerous as a target on the right than the left arm, because farther from the heart and less apt to be concealed, and because the right arm is less used in carrying the piece, and is never folded across the person, as the left must be, when at a support, a charge, a present and a slope arms, and always, in cavalry, when the bridle-arm is used.

The ladies — the ever ready and patriotic friends for soldiers — could, in one hour, shape and cut out, from a single piece of cotton, one thousand of these stars; and a general order from headquarters requiring them to be worn by all, would protect our brave men at once from the dreadful disasters — recently so frequent — resulting from these terrible mistakes. A very unmerited censure, it seems to me, has been cast by one of your Yorktown correspondents on Col. Magruder, for failing, on a recent occasion, to send out guides with videttes and scouting parties, by which failure, it is supposed, two of our scouts were fired upon by a party of our own men. It is not easy to see how any number of guides could have prevented this casualty. The unhappy mistake arose from the want of some such distinction in dress as that above suggested.

Miles.

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