The Van Buren press., 1898-09-24
Hood Sarsaparilla and Pills for sal
at JOHN O KANE 5 DRUG STORE.
The War Department and Our New
Foreign Policy.

Foreign Policy.
From the Scientific American.
It did not require the test of the late
war to prove the mettle of the Amerl-
can soldier, or the skill and heroism OF
the officers that led him into battle but
it did require just such a test TO open
the eyes of the American public 10 the
woeful incapacity and confusion that
reigns in certain branches of the war
department. With all the accumulated
experience of the great Civil War to go
upon, our quartermaster, subsistence,
and medical departments should have
been among the most efficient in the
world. They were popularity supposed
to be so, and the public never doubted,
when war was declared, that in the
transportation of troops, the bringing
up of supplies, and the care of the sick
and wounded, we should show some
thing of that characteristic order and
method which has contributed SO large
| " to our present industrial supremacy.
The public was doomed, however, TO a
bitter and humiliating disappointment.
The confusion that existed from the
first in the Southern camps was merely
prelude to the scenes of inexcusable
suffering and neglect which marked the
progress of the campaign and the
melancholy home coming of the troops
at its close.
Nor can the department be absolyed
of all blame because great results were
actually achieved in the few months of
the war. The same res ults could have
been achieved, and should have been,
without the terrible Accomplishments of
neglect and starvation that are causing
d thrill of anguish and indignation to
pass from one end of the country to the
other. The performance of one duty
does not atone for the total neglect of
another, and the demand of the public
for searching and impartial investiga
tion is both reasonable and just.
Apart from its moral aspects, how
ever, there is another consideration of
a very practical nature which makes it
imperative that the investigation should
be set on foot at once. We refere to
the portentous change which has taken
place in the foreign relations of this
country, and the widespread and com
plicated field of naval and military
operations upon which the nation has
entered.
Cuba, with its diverse and bitterly
opposed races to be pacifed and gar
risoned; Porto Rico to be held as Eng
lands holds Jamaica Hawaii, in the
mid Pacific. and the Philippines, 1000
miles away in the Southern Seas, are
all likely to become the outposts of
military activities, which have been
hitherto confined to our own
borders and represented by a mere
handful of 25, 900 men. If the wish of
a considerable section of the American
pcoPAc 10 Iulullcu, We shall uuu UuT-
selves embarked upon a colonial policy
which will demand the very highest
efficiency in those very branches of
the war department that have broken
down so completely in the present war.
If we cannot form and maintain
camp within our own borders without
starting so preventable an epidemic as
typhoid fever, how, in Heaven s name,
are we to maintain permanent camps in
the fever laden towns of Cuba and
Porto Rico2 If the transportation and
nursing afforded our sick troops on
short trip from the West Indies is such
that they die, soon after landing, "of
starvation, because they do not have
food that is suitable to convalescent, -
how, we ask, are the convalescents to
be brought over the 5000 miles of
ocean that separate Manila from the
United Statesf Yet the work of trans
porting troops and maintaining them in
| garrisons from one island to another,
will have to be carried on continuously
as part of our control and administra
ton of these newly acquired posses
sions. Does any one doubt that, if our
present methods were followed, the
mortality among the troops would be a
repetition Of that which is now carrying
off our soldiers by the hundredl
Our war department stands in need
of immediate and sweeping reform.
This reform is necessary for the double
purpose of visiting condign punishment
upon the parties who are answerable
for the present mortality among our
troops and of placing the department
on footing which shall enable it to
cope successfully with the grave mill
/ tary problems of the future.
, President Mckinley an AccOmplice.
| ~ n.