The San Francisco call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1895-1913, 1898-09-07
THE YELLOW CAMPAIGN.
I ! HEN the yellow journals began their denun-
w Citations of the War Department and first set
forth their ghasty and greWsome stories OF

II I HEN the yellow journals began their denun-
| w Citations OF the War Department and first set
forth their CHASTITY and grewsome stories OF
starvation and suffering among the troops in the
rlous camps of the East, not few people were in
cned to believe their reports. Indeed many of the
earlier reports quite true In all wars troops at
the front frequently lack for sufficient supplies and
when men taken from salubrious climate to the
swamps of the tropics they liable under the best
of circumstances to be attacked by maarial levers.
These evils to considerable extent befell our vol
unteers at Santiago and the suffering they underwent
sufficient to win for them the sympathy OF every
patriotic heart. That sympathy freey<given. No
gross exaggerations of the suffering and the sick
ness necessary to arouse it 1t rose spontan-
eously in the breasts of the people as the con-
dton OF affairs made known, and prompt was
the responsive offering of money, food, medicines
and decaces of all kinds for the relief and the COM
fort of the sufferers.
No sooner, however, was this widespread sympathy
made known than the yellow journals seized upon the
opportunity to make profit out OF it. AT once
host of sensational irresponsible writers OF the emo
tional kind turned loose to furnish the public
daily with tales of pestilence, hunger famine and
cruelty Dante hardly painted Inferno in blacker
more horrid colors than these yellow rhetoricans
used in painting the camps of the American troops
Estimated by the tales they told, Weylers treatment
OF the CuDan gen
tleness in comparison to the treatment inflicted upon
our soldiers by their officers and the Government.
All this was bad enough, but there worse to
come. The yellow journals having made much as
they could Of the sickness among the troops
newspaper sensation, began to turn to account for
political ends The fused factions arrayed in
opposition to the administration badly in need of
issue which to make the campaign 1t occurred
to the yellow editors that their camp stories would be
useful issue the faction agtators, and at
they gave political turn the of lies by adding
others the effect that the President and the Sec
rotary of War directly responsible for the death
of every soldier who died of disease
The maignancy of these charges is by means
the characteristic of them. They have been
insulting the nation and have tended to blacken
and stain the splendid glory by the Union in the
They have portrayed our Government as ver
crueler and more nhumanly barbarous to its troops
than any earth They have led thousands of
American to live in fear and dread that more
serious dangers their loved ones in the camps
at home since the close of the war than in the
trenches before Santiago; and they have Knocked the
honor of brave officers by representing them as cow
ards and thieves.
Such is the policy of attack the yellow journals
have outlined for the fusionists 1t remains to be
seen whether any of them will be base enough to.
adopt it. The Examiner has led the way in this State
but yet speaker has followed the lead It will
be well for them. indeed if they abstain Trying to
evade the single tax land coniscaton record of Ma
guire by such tactics would be striking instance of
avoiding the road by taking to the nire.