The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1899-05-21

republic, and in no department can
this be undertaken with greater salts
faction to the masses and with less in
jury to the government than in the de-
partment of the army and navy.
| There are reasons, however. to be-
lieve that France will be loath to re-
duce her navy whatever she may con-
sent to do with her army. for enough
| of the latter will have to be maintained
| to make respectable show at home
| and to garrison her colonies, while it
may require all of her navy to look
after her foreign possessions.
France emerged from her last war
| with England with but a moiety of her
former colonial empire But she has
burdened her people and almost bank
rupted her public treasury by new con-
quests. The acquisition of Algeria in
1880, and the annexations and protec-
torates of Cochin China, AMMAN, Ton
quin. the Niger and Congo regions,
Senegal, Madagascar and numerous
islands and naval stations in both
hemispheres, which have been effected
in later years, make France rank as a
tOiOiiidl POWti lltAl dllGI DlildiA-
The defence of the colonies. together
with their unavoidable military expedi-
tons and inevitable little wars, such as
we are having taste of in the Orient
now, have resulted in building up a
military despotism in France as corrupt
as it is inimical to the institutions of
free people.
The military expeditions in Tonquin,
Madagascar and Senegal, owing to the
jealouses and rivalries of the three adj
ministrations, the departments of war,
the navy, and the colonies, revealed
faults in the commissariat, transport,
equipment and medical services which
would have proved fatal had it not been
for the patient endurance of the French
common soldier.
Corruption goes hand in hand with
militarism in France. The army has
become a great political machine, just
as Alger and Mckinley are trying to
make it in this country, and scandals |
are of such frequent occurrence that it |
is only when high officials are I'M
prosecuted as Dreyfus has !
them at all.
When Alger admitted that unwhole
some rations had been supplied the |
army in the war with Spain and asked |
with unspeakable insolence What of
it?" he gave fair imitation of what |
France is with her spirit of imperialism
and her army differed by French poll
ticians.
The experiences of Tonquin and
showed that under the
present system the sending of an eX-
corps of $1,000 men beyond
the sea completely dislocated the
of the mobilization plans
Of the home army. To obviate this ma
tional danger, permanent and indie
pendent colonial army, comprising an
force of $1,000 men and 1873
guns, has been decided upon by the
commission, whose con-
illusions have always been adopted
question by both branches of
the legislature. This is a plan that
night be adopted by the United States
n the Philippines but the question
arises, dare we trust the Filipinos? Are
hey not, as a race, at complete vari-
lnce with our American ideas of gov
of laws, of punishment, of
social life, of morals of religious liberty
md every thing that the men and
of this republic take especial
bride and pleasure in? Would there
lot be an eternal clash of ideas and ]
# authority? Are we prepared as a
lation, with a possible change of adj
and national policy every
our years, to govern the heterogeneous J
,eopleS of a thousand islands half way /
round the earth from the seat of gov {
I
While there are many features of i'm
'erialism that naturally appeal to {
man, these are questions
o consider with care before fully en-
orsing policy that involves the sup I
ression of piracy in the China sea, s
he determination of Mahommedans on 5
he Spanish archipelago. the extermi- i
ation of the Tagals. and endless in =
directions and revolutions in another {