The Scranton tribune. [volume] (Scranton, Pa.) 1891-1910, 1899-07-26
The Country's Sober Judgment.


The attempt to array public opinion
against the military management of
the campaign in Luzon has failed.
Secretary Root will enter on the active
control Of the war department and on
official responsibility for operations
soon to commence with a public con-
vlction that the opening attack, after
the rainy season is over will be deci-
sive. The criticism and fault-finding
Of a month past is ebbing. AS the
facts have become known the basis
for this criticism has vanished. The
administration, ii was declared, has
sent too few troops. A year ago when
General Miles was advising 5000 troops
and General Merritt twice this num-
ber, nearly $4,000 troops were sent, or
almost twice the number demanded
by it's military advisers. When last
February the Tagal attack precipitat-
ed a war which every effort had been
made to avoid by the offer of complete
autonomy to Aguinaldo and his gov
ernment, the administration has been
charged with providing too few troops.
1t was month to a day after this
attack before congress passed the law
providing for an army to be organized
after peace was declared, an army for
which the president had asked in De-
cember.
With peace the war army was dis
solved, though the volunteer regi-
ments in Luzon heroically continued a
service not required by the terms Of
their enlistment and made necessary
by congressional delay. The peace
army had to be reorganized from the
basis of a regular army only 27,40O
strong. This army has been, since
last March, expanded at the rate of
1000 men a week. BY July General Otis
had %, 1000; by the middle of next month
he will have 10000, and by October 40,-
900. Criticism that troops were not
being provided fast enough has stopped
in the face of these figures. A govern
ment which begins in March with only
q, 400 under permanent enlistment,
every other man being free to leave,
and which by September has in the
Philippines 10000 men. an adequate
garrison N Cuba and Porto Rico and
sufficient troops for home purposes, or
$4,000 in all, has shown no slack hand,
| and the country sees it and admits it.
Lastly, comes the use of these troops
In Luzon. the American troops have
| held Manila, a city of $4,000 inhabit-
ants, confidently expected to rise they
l,oN al hnl nf
| GOO to 1000 square miles; they have
| broken every large organized force op-
| posed to them in an army with 10000
| on its rolls they have carried every
| insurgent capital and depot of sup
| plies, and by continuing operations in
the field through half the rainy season,
until the monsoon broke in July with
double the usual rainfall, they have de-
! prived the Tagals of the customary
| period in which tropic troops rent
while temperate troops leave the Held
| Our Indian wars were never over until
we took the field in winter General
| Otis has followed the precedent in
| pushing on through the rainy season
1t has cost some illness, though thr
proportion is far less than in most
European expeditions; but in the END
this vigor will save more life than II
loses. We confidently predict that tho
result of this policy will grow plair
as events unfold in the Philippines.
Nor is this all that has been done
Iloilo has been occupied and resistance
has ceased on P3nay. In Negros The
coast is occupied and there remain only
such bands Of dacoits as Captain ByrnC
has broken up by his courageous as
sault, delivered four 10 one. This &C
tion, small as are the number, is
fair Illustration of the work before ou
troops. The peaceful peasantry asked
only to till their fertile and thickl!
settled fields. A Spanish renegade o.
half breed had gathered in the hills
band of 200 or 800, drawn from a saw
age tribe which was plunderlng tn
plains. The misery, the cruelty ant
the barbarous oppression ana plunde
which follow this condition of affair
no man can conceive who does no
know Oriental life and has not seei
something OF II, Our troops hav
wiped out the plundering horde an
the palm m-thatchsd village of the peas
ant is safe from the dacoit's torch an
his women from outrage. The ha
protects him and his as well as tn