Arizona republican., 1898-06-13
THE WAR CRITICS.

In the last week there has been much criticism of the administration by fat wits drawing salaries from newspapers. These worthies, with no knowledge of the requirements of war, have undertaken to show that the war department has been inexcusably slow in massing and equipping troops and pushing the war to a speedy termina- tion. The facts do not sustain their asinine criticisms.
 To create an army of 250,0O0 sea- soned men is the work of years. We could not do it in ten days. It will be almost miracle if it is done in ten months, though the war may then be over. The administration has had a stupendous task, and it has made good
 progress. There have been some er-
 TOTS of ignorance and incapacity, and selfish interest has not always been de- feated. but there has been less of all this than might have been expected, and vastly less than in the civil war.
 The army is in better shape in six
 weeks than the federal army was in six months, even with Stanton. High CT capacity and greater energy in the war department might have made a bad matter better, but even genius can not work miracles.
 Intelligent and temperate criticism |of the men engaged in the tremendous task of improvising an army is help- full. Ignorant and presumptuous cr1ti- 'cism adds to the burdens of men who have already all the care and labor they can endure, and confuses and mis- leads the public. The army is suffer- ing deal of criticism of this sort, not only from civilians who know nothing but from semi-foreigners who know more about the conditions of European military service than American. Ig- hcrant and presumptuous criticism fastens upon minor details without seeing large faults and, above all, overlooks absolute physical conditions by which the work of army organlza- tion is limited. The whole country was convulsed over the appointment Of few harmless youngsters to minor staff positions, but nobody seemed to think it an evil that nearly all the pro- visional regiments were going to the front without trained officers. That was the great evil, and it would have made it greater to take trained line of- fcers for staff positions. Now that ex- treme effort has been made to combat this greatest evil by promoting regular army officers to volunteer regiments. instead of appointing raw civilians the cry goes up from Poultney Bigelow. a man who knows the German army better than the American, that the reg ular army is being demoralized.
 The regular army had to be demor- alized to officer the provisional army for work the regulars were too few to do. The finest little army in the world had to be broken up to make greater army of inferior value and efh- It was a necessary sacrifice. The president has maQe all the ueiu appointments he could from the regu- lar army, making generals of co1cnels and colonels of captains, only using war veterans and militia officers to them. The places of these regulars have been filled by promotion. sweeping the companies bare of lieu tenants Their places will be filled in time, it is hoped, by promotion from the ranks. In the meantime the rcgi- ments are under-oficered. The situaf- tion is irremediable. The way to pre- vent its recurrence is to maintain our army on a peace footing of 100. 900 men. with officers and staff organization Tor three times as many.