The times. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1897-1901, 1898-08-29
The Traitors of Tbi. War.


the Spanish-American war seems 10
have been to establish precedents. The
business OF prophet has been most I'M
certain. We have done the things we
never dreamed we could do. and failed
to do the things we expected most con-
fdently to do. Our navy, which for the
last generation has been considered our
weak point. has acquitted itself glori-
ously, while the business part of the
war, which, in country like this,
might have been supposed to go with
especial smoothness, has been disgrace
fully mismanaged. All these things
make il necessary for us to evolve new
forms of etiquette. There is nothing
laid down in the books which can guide
our behavior in the emergencies of this
war We must simply rise to them.
The country has, in fact. been rather
in the position of the aristocrat!c scion
of a noble house who was caught up
in cyclone, and pondered while he
was being carried through the air,
just what would be the proper thing
for him to do as a gentleman when he
should reach the ground.
The latest instance of this sort of diff
ficuIty comes in the scandals of the
hospital service. Consider now a lit
tie. Suppose that one thousand, one
hundred, even a score. of our msn
had been captured by Spain at the be-
ginning of this war. Suppose they had
been kept in fever haunted amps. with
out good water, without opportunit es
for bathing, without anything to eat
except one piece of moldy bareback
per day. and possibly bit of fat pork
Suppose that when they fell i'll under
this treatment, they had been forced
to lie on the cold, wet ground; to walk
from one hospital to another; TO go
without medicines, nursing, or proper
food. Suppose that one Of them had
been turned out of a field hospital while
still too feeble TO walk. deprived of all
clothing except a rubber blanket, and
left to find his way back to his COM
rades as best he might; and suppose
that, exhausted by his sufferings, he
had died within a week. And suppose
that, after less than three months of
this kind of life, our volunteers had
been sent from Cuba to New York in
transports not fit for cattleships,
crowded in like merchandise, fed on
moldy food and unprovided with the
commonest comforts of life, and given
water to drink that by all the laws OF
sanitary precaution should have been
| considered poison.
Suppose that hundreds of volunteers
! had come back to US from these ships,
| after life in these pestholes, ragged,
wasted, haggard, dispirited, WORKOUT
wrecks of their former selves, while we
had been feeding Spanish prisoners on
fare which, compared with their coun-
| try's provision for their needs, was
nothing less than princely. What would
the country have said then?
Would American fathers and broth
| ers have been content TO end the war
after such revelations? Would they
| not have vowed vengeance on the en-
| tire Spanish nation? Would there be
anything left of Cadiz, or Barcelona,
or Madrid, when this nation finally
| considered it time TO stop lighting?
All these things have happened, but
it is not Spain that is to blame. 1t is
not Spanish officers and guards that
have sent these boys back to us starv-
ing. Some Of the sufferers have not Sc
much as seen q Spanish soldier. They
| have been broken down in camp within
the boundary lines of the country fol
which they offered to give their lives
The men who are responsible for this
thing are not Spanards, who owe IL.
nothing and can be expected to giv'
us nothing. They are men who ar,
drawing salaries from the United
States Government. They are living il
luxury on the peoples money, Will,
the volunteer. at s15.60 a month. is al
lowed to die from starvation and neg
lected wounds. That is the plain case
and it is about as ugly case as can b,
conceived. 1t is time that a cyclon,
struck the War Department and turned
it inside out for inspection.