Wheeling register. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1878-1935, 1899-02-13
MCKINLEY, NOT MILES, Is IN DANGER

MCKINLEY, NOT MILES, Is IN DANGER.
Weak people are apt to exhibit stub
bornness in pursuing wrong course
This is an automatic truth. 1t requires
more or less strength of character to
acknowledge an error of judgment even
in the minor affairs of life. How
much greater moral strength, there
fore, must it call for in the President
of the United States, who has the eyes
of 100000 people on him, to ac-
knowledge his shortcomings and COR
rect his mistakes!
In the latter case it requires more of
that strength than is evidently pos
sessed by William Mckinley.
The President made mistake when
he elevated Russell A. Alger, a dis
credited soldier and Michigan Doodle
politician, to his cabinet and to the
head of the War Department. 1t was
a mistake that Mr.. Mckinley undoubt-
eddy has never ceased to regret.
Alger would probably have made
fair Secretary Of War in time of pro-
found peace, when the Office is largely
q sinecure and devoted to routine and
more or less to civil matters. But as
a Secretary of War in time of actual
war Alger has proven the most monu-
mental failure of which there is any
record in history, ancient or modern.
He filled the responsible positions in
the army at his disposal as a small
minded and selfish politician might be
expected to do, with pack of raw
nonenities and incompetents, his own
political henchmen and personal ia
vorites. The President, himself, was
largely responsible for this fatal blum
der, for he aided and abetted Alger in
it and made the appointments himself.
This was the first step in the worst
managed military campaign in history,
the result of which was the horrible
maltreatment and wholesale official
murder in camp, in transport and in
the field, of the finest army the world
ever saw. Every newspaper reader is
familiar with the facts.
President Mckinley was early ac-
quainted with Ayers utter unfitness
for the responsible duties of his office.
And right then-at the starts when
the President should have acted,
frankly admitting his error in elevat
;,,o, A 1Oo, +n hot NV nnlito1N nd
kindly requesting his resignation.
But although Mr.. Mckinley unques-
tlonably saw his mistake, as the whole
country did, yet he had not the moral
strength to admit it and correct it as
Lincoln, for example, would have done.
Imagine Lincoln during the civil war
keeping a man like Alger at the head
of the War Department once having
found him out! But there is a mighty
difference between the characters of
Abraham Lincoln and William McKin-
ley. In point of moral strength, the
one was a giant; the other is a weak
ling.
Since the very outbreak of the Span
ish war Mr.. McKinleys weak stubborn
ness in maintaining Alger and the Of
fenSiye and incompetent clique of
familiars he gathered about him in the
War Department, has gotten him and
his administration deeper and deeper
into the mire of scandal until now the
whole, from top to bottom seems per-
meated with rottenness and officialdom
at Washington has become a stencil in
the nostrils of the American people
like unto the embalmed beef with which
Eagan poisoned the troops.
1t is too late now for the President
to right matters by dismissing Alger.
The time has passed when he could
have saved his administration and won
a reflected glory from the magnificent
achievements of our miSmanaged
troops by ousting the Michigan incubus
and his coterie of discredited soldiers.
He missed his opportunity through his
weakness and matters inevitably have
gone straight from bad to worse, from
scandal to scandal and investigation
and whitewash to further investigation
and more whitewash, from Alger and
Corbin to Eagan, until the administra-
ton of William Mckinley, which prom
Used to reap such great benefits politi-
cally from the war, has become hope
less wreck, sinking, like that of the
Maine in the mud of Havana harbor
into mass of fostering scandal upon
scandal political hulk upon which
only political buzzards will roost.
And it all is due to Mr.. McKinley's
stubbornness in sticking to mistake
that common failing of weak people
which has prevented him from &C
knowledging his error and doing the
right thing at the right time.
AS matters now stand the Presiden
can neither go forward with hope fol
the future nor retreat and save him
self He has raised up political riva
whom he cannot crush, who alread.
overshadows his administration ant
his own political future, in the person