The daily morning journal and courier., 1898-09-07

| IiAN pci oOll'~ IAolAnNi 'PN'
 "No," said Senator Sorghum, with
 emphasis, T can't talk for publication to-day" But, senator, In all the years
 of our acquaintance this is the first
 time you ever declined to let me quote you." T don't want you not to quote
 me. want you to say l decline to be
 interviewed. This is confidential; I've | concluded it's time for me to act as If
 I'd got to be so important that l dasnt
 talk for fear of giving something big
 away. Star.
 | STARTERS SANTIAGO CAMPAIGN
 To the Editor of the Journal and Courier: | It is not pleasant to crlticise adverse | ly General Shafters campaign. Appa- | rently 1t was successful. In fact it was | full of blunders. But the life of an or | ganlzed state depends In the last resort
 upon military force, and the effective
 ness of that force is generally measured
 by the quality of it's commander and | the conduct of such commander is al-
 ways and rightly subjected to keen crit l iSlollis 1OACSlIllltS tiiip SttiiPoiSh fSAA-
 eral Shafter has said that he had an en- | tirely free hand, and the responsibility
 and apparent glory belong to him. | General Shafter served in the civil war as Michigan volunteer in su-
 bordinate capacity. At the close of | that war he entered the regular army | and in course of time became colonel of | infantry, which was his rank until the 1 Spanish disturbance began. He is not a West Point graduate, and his experi-
 ence has been confined to service in the infantry. His sobriquet in the army
 was q am told) Bull Shafter." The "inspired' dispatch from the War de- | partment, the morning after the cap ture of San Juan and Fl Caney, stated | that General Shafter had his fangs in I the throat of the Spaniard and would not let go." That is the trick of the bull-dog.
 | Quite early General Shafter was I brought into prominence as the officer
 selected to command the best fighting i force of the new army. He was given
 one-half the entire regular army, and
 what was equally significant, Roose-
 velt's Rough Riders were assigned to | him.
 1 The bottling up of Cervera's fleet in | the harbor of Santiago, and the impos- 1 sibility of getting at it by Sampsons s | feet called for the aid of an army to assist in it's capture. and Shafter's corps | was naturally selected for that purpose. | The dangers of campaign in Cuba, es- pecially in June and Juy, under the di- | rect overhead rays of the tropical sun, were we'll known, and 1t was the duty of General Shafter to go prepared for ordinary or extraordinary emergencies. It is most astonishing statement, but General Shafter left behind him his cavalry force, his engineers and most of his light artillery He took his cav alrymen, but without their horses. He took his pontoons st to bridge the San Juan river, but the pontoons were nev- CT landed
 Cavalry are the "eyes" of an army, and General Shafter "went it blind" He wholly underestimate the strength of the Spanish positions at San Juan and Fl Clancy and the ability of the Spaniard to fight
 In his cable to Washington, just af- ter the capture of these places, he said l his losses were seveIa, estimating them at four hundred, mostly wounded" In fact they were nearly two thou sand. One in three of the officers who l led the men at San Juan and Fl Caney, and one in four of the men, were killed or wounded-a most extraordinary ra- | tio of loss. The bewildered surprise of General Shafter as to his losses shows
 how completely he had under-estimated | the strength of the Spaniard It is not | strange. He had no cavalry force by | which to ascertain the position and force of the enemy.
 l All critics-home and foreign--agree | that it was a military blunder that 1 infantry should have been obliged to | storm San Juan and Fl Caney substan- | tially without the aid of field artillery. | Those positions should have been | ''shelled," and the assault of the infan- | try made, so far as possible, under cov- CT of the artillery. As was said of the
 charge of the famous "six hundred of | the English Light Brigade at Balakla- | va, "it was magnificent, but it was not | war"
 | General Shafter landed his army at | Raiquiri, fourteen miles east of Santia- | go, June P and 23, and let his "dogs of
 war loose-like a pack of hounds from I the leash-in the direction of Santiago. | But he had come unprepared with | transportation with which to supply | the physical wants of his army. | He had brought an abundance of food and medical supplies on his trans | ports, but he had brought substantial ly no mules and no horses for pack trains, substantially no wagons and no engineers to supervise the building of roads or bridges.
 General Shafter took with him no
 sufficient hospital or ambulance corps.
 and only three ambulances for his en-
 tire army. So states one of his division surgeons.
 The excessive, sultry heat with copi-
 ous, almost daily rain, forced his sol- diers to throw away their heavy coats. blankets, etc. They had to do this or
 fall out'-with no one to take care of
 them-a worse calamity.
 The army on the march and in the fighting line, and in it's trenches, was to large extent without proper clothing, without tentage, without sufficient food
 or medical supplies, without sufficient
 surgeons or hospital corps, and with only three ambulances for eighteen hundred wounded men, scattered over