The record-union., 1898-09-16
THE ASSAILANTS OF THE ADMIN
ISTRATION.


Stump speakers are already afield,
and a certain class of them are taxi
ing the cue from a press that seems
bedeviled to smlrch itself and discredit
the nation in the eyes of the world;
these small bore fellows are shouting,
'"Ten American soldiers died of starva-
tion, neglect, undressed wounds and
Untreated disease, where one died by
the bullet of a Spanish soldier, and for
this crime the nation arraigns the Re-
publican Administration
Who has given to these men the right
to bring the Administration to the bar
of a hustings tribunal? What warrant
has partisan greed for thus misrepre-
senting history and belittling one Of
the most marvellous Of victories of the
worlds annals?
The fact is that a more senseless, in
eXcusable and cruel assault has never
been made under partisan guise. It is
not alone an 1ttack upon the Admins
tration That is but for a day; it is
an assault also upon national honor
and good faith, upon humane senti
ment, upon patriotism and loyalty and
the humanity of the people of the ma
ton.
Every soldier who enlisted, every reg
ular commanded to duty, knew on the
opening Of the war that it was fraught
with unusual dangers; that there was
need for more than ordinary self-sacri-
fee and heroism to fortify those who
We're to go into torrid and unhealthful
climes, and meet an enemy acclimated,
every one Of them, that not Spanish
bullets alone, but deadly miasm, fatal
fevers, exhausting heat and sitting
humidity Of atmosphere in the midst
be met and endured. They knew that
they had to assail an enemy strongly
intrenehed and fighting from behind
protection, unusual in war and bar
construction.
They knew that they had before them
long ocean voyages and sea hardships,
and must operate far from home bases
and under conditions such as no Amer
lean army had been called upon to
endure. They knew, as did every off,
Ger, military, naval and civil, that the
fighting had to be pushed, no matter
what the sacrifice. That long cam
paign would mean our defeat, that the
work had to be cut out short, sharp
and swift, and that hardship, inde-
scribable perhaps, was to be the fate
Of those falling wounded. or stricken
down by the vicious diseases of an
inhospitable climate.
They knew that torrid heat would
strike many before the battles were
on, that hundreds would come home
only to die, that other hundreds would
for all after life be incapaciated from
full enjoyment of being. Misery and
death were as certain for some as was
victory and safety for others. But
these men never faltered They left
home and comforts for trial. privation
and anguish; and the expected has hap
pened. They are not murmuring.
They have not commissioned the pin
head politicians to mount campaign
stumps and roar against a Government
to which the American soldiers COM
mitted themselves for national defense
and honor, and for humane senti-
ment such as the world has never be-
fore known in manifestation.
These stump and yellow demagogues
now piping in campaign fields, say the
army should not have been sent to
Cuba and Porto Rico in the sickly sea-
son. Yet only a little while ago these
same men and their cowardly hackers,
the sensational press. were shouting
"on to Havana" and lambasting the
President because he delayed to issue
such an order.
Yes, it is true that something over
a thousand men have died or are dying
midsummer climate in which they bat
tied for their country. But in those
self same hours, in the short period of
six days, 200 human beings died in
New York City of deadly heat, where
there were no battlefields, no malarial
swamps. no intrenched enemy, no
Mauser bullets, and no pouring rain,
hot and fever ladened.
The onlookers of the world, the mill
tary experts of earth, declare that the
tropic campaign was gloriously mar
velous in character and results, such
a success as history bears no record
of, and that the death loss and hos
pital charge, all things considered,
have been astonishingly light But
these European military experts are
not running for office. They are not
of the Democratic contingent that seeks
to ascendancy upon the shoulders of
shame.