The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1898-02-23

guard of small boats that was assigned
to police duty around the visitor was
not needed. He could trust for the
perfect safety of his ship and its crew
to the honor of the American people.
SENATOR MORRILL, has spoken on the
question of the ratification of the Hs-
waiian treaty of annexation. AS his
remarks were made in executive session
they were not given to the public, but it
is we'll understood that the senator is
strongly opposed to annexation. On
this subject Vermonts senators are di-
vided.
THEORIES as to the cause OF the de-
struction of the battleship Maine are
as thick as snowflakes in Vermont
snow storm. Many are strained, far
fetched and conflicting, but in re-
epect of all that charge the calamity to
the account of accident the naval Off
Ger who made the subjoined statement
will have many followers:
"No matter what theories there may be
as to how the Maine was destroyed, it is
peculiar in connection with the law OF
chances that this affair should have been
the first Of the kind to occur in the United
States navy since the war, to a ship sta
toned at this very time in the place where
this country had reason to fear treachery."
THE demand for an investigation Of
the cause of the disaster to the battle
ship Maine, by committee of Senators
and Representatives is right and rea-
sonable. Congress, the body repre-
senting the people, appropriates the
peoples money to build ships, and is
asked for further appropriations on
this account. In accounting for the
blowing up of the Maine, the admins
tration has accepted the theory of acct
dental cause. If the administration is
right, the disaster in the harbor of Ha-
vana, saying nothing of the recent mar
row escape of the Cincinnati-now dis
closed-from destruction by fire in her
coal bunkers which adjoined one of the
magazines, calls for halt in the build
ing of ships that are liable to be sent to
the bottom, with their crews, by the
explosion of their magazines, or by
other internal accidents. The people
are the first parties in interest. They
provide the money for building the
ships and the property is theirs. They
have right to know through their i'm
mediate representatives whether the
ships are traps, unreasonably liable to
accident that will destroy the property,
and-ten thousand times worse-des-
troy, also, the brave men who embark in
them for the country's defense. Con-
gressional investigation means no re-
Election upon the efficiency or honor of
the navy, and does not exclude inves-
tigation by naval boards. The latter
is right and necessary, and the two
may go hand in hand, if independent
action will be less efficient. But if the
ship was blown up by external forces
for which its construction, or the ar
rangement of its parts, is in no wise
blamable, it is of the highest import
ance to know that, for reasons that
need not be named; and the body that
is to vote the money for new Maine,
or for additional naval defenses, has
right to knowledge of all the facts
and circumstances, from its own imme-
diate investigation, as justification of
further grants of money for building
warships.
PROBABLY Senator Mason of Illinois
was not polite in rising in his place in
the upper house of Congress and de-
handing an immediate investigation of
the disaster to the battleship Maine by
committee Of Senators and Represen-
tatives and it may have been injudi-
cious to support his resolution calling
for congressional investigation with
plain, blunt words and impassioned
utterance. Men with big hearts and
ready sympathies are rarely polite and
may be sometimes injudicious. The
Senator stood quite alone in demanding
investigation by the peoples represent
tatives; but if modern degeneracy has
indeed entered the Senate, the enervat-
ing influence certainly has not reached
Billy Mason. In respect of his ardent
nature and human sympsthies, as dis
played in his fiery denunciation of
Spanish tyrany and brutality, and his
intense championship of the people
fighting and suffering for their freedom,
he shows that the course of blood sis
warmer than the mountain stream"
And when the sizzling current from
his heart encounters the ice water from
the cardiac regions Of Senator Eugene
Hale's frigid anatomy there is apt to be
something of a seething in the Senate
and thawing out of that body's Arctic
serenity, and the galleries .pl lAud