Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1899-07-20

Uttered and aggravated by partisan and
personal hostility which saw in President
McKinleys administration no other object
of attack and no other point of criticism.
Secretary Ayers retirement ends and
closes the only charge against the work of
the administration seriously made or widely
affecting any large part of the public. The
assiduity with which it was urged was it.
self the best possible proof that no other
channel for assault existed and no other
charge was available. With its disappear
ance, through Secretary Ayers resignation,
IL is literally true that nothing else re-
mains. in war or in peace, on which Sc
rious charge can be made against the con-
duct of public affairs and the government
for two years and nearly five months since
President Mckinley was iraugurated.
With Secretary Alger, as with all men
associated with large events ard the great
affairs of men. 1t is for the history OF
the future and not the opinion of the day
to reach a final verdict. This. it may be
confidently predicted. will revise and re-
dress much now charged and asserted, and
his final position in history will not be that
estimated by many today, but one modified
by larger and fuller knowledge.
Declared to Have Been Failure.
The Philadelphia Times says: THE dis
passionate unmistakable and irrevocable
Judgment of the people is that Secretary
Alger has been failure in his office. Many
will be glad few will be sorry, to see him
leave it. In America the will Of the people
is supreme. The people demanded that
Secretary Alger resign. He obeyed. That
President Mckinley and Secretary Alger
have at last, though tardily, submitted to
the sovereign mandate of the people is still
to their credit. The President should real
lie, however, that this is but step In the
right direction. He has only made be-
ginning toward regaining the confidence OF
the people which he has sacrificed by his
adherence to the counsels, inspired by the
petty personal jealouses. WEAKNESSES and
arDhftioDS of the hlIrpaurratS of the
War and the Navy Departments.
General Alger reached the position which
he has just resigned by methods which
should never be used to secure a cabinet
portfolio .or any other honorable office. He
thus was hampered from the beginning by
political and personal obligations from
which he was unable to disentange himself
and which doomed him to inevitable failure,
and the sympathy of many who demanded
his removal will follow him into his forced
retirement from public life.
The BOston Journal.
The Boston Journal says editorially:
Secretary Alger has done the right thing
the thing which he ought to have done
the very day that he announced himself
as fighting candidate for election to the
United States Senate. This We say with
cut reference to his disputed alliance in
his own state with the absurd Pingree,
whose abuse of the national admlnlstra-
ton has been almost unique
The Journal repeats that where the war
administration broke down under Secre-
tary Alger it would have broken down
nine times out of ten under any other
man; that Congress. which means in
sense the people themselves. had starved
the army in size and equipment. and when
the time came to Increase it in thirty days
from 5000 to 25o,GG1 no man living, whose
equaled Secretary Ayers,
could have escaped disaster and an accom-
panying avalanche of abuses.
The New York Times.
The New York Times puts it:
Exit Alger, 1t will be agreed about Sec
rotary AIger, as it was said about Cawder |
in Macbeth" that
Nothing in his life
Became him like the leaving it,
Carlyle's French Revolution" abounds !
in reflections how innocent. how happy, |
how useful might the principal maiefactors |
have been if only they had not had the |
evil fate which they thought good fate, |
to be thrown to the top in times OF con-
vulsion and dissection" Poor Secretary |
Alger probably meant no harm in aspiring |
to be Secretary of War in what he eX- |
pected to be time of peace. Most likely |
his specific ambition was merely the com
paratively modest and innocnous one OF
Cooking" his own official record during |
the civil war. Certainly he could not have |
foreseen that the Spaniards would blow |
up the Maine. Certainly he could not !
nave IOreSeeu tilsil "Ouiu ne ottictdiS
of War in war time. When that unexpect- |
ed thing happened it would no doubt have |
been for his interest to get out and leave |
the place upon which he had foreclosed |
mortgage nor to mortgagor to somebody |
who could fill it. But on the outbreak |
of war he saw only his chance of pun |
ishing his enemies and rewarding his |
friends. He did not foresee, as how !
could he foresee, that his incompetency |
would become at once manifest; that from
Tampa to Montauk it would make him the
enemy of the army and the country; that |
he, who did not hate more than the nor
NAL proportion of persons, would be eX-
ecrated throughout the army and the coun-
try. And now that he has, none too |
early but many months too late, chosen |
to get out of d place from which his chief |
could not put him out, chosen to feheNe the |
of the incubus that his |
presence devolved upon II, chosen to seek |
the shade and find wisdom in neglect, it |
would be uubecoming for any American to |
exult. In his own place, in private life, |
Mr.. Alger has as many scrupies, doubt |
less. the politicians or as the business |
men with whom he completes. He Is re- |
ported to be an amiable and friendly per- |
son. Let us wish him well, now that he |
can no longer do us i'll. But then it be- |
kooves us to bear in mind how 1t has been |
exemplified in his that no man is so |
stubborn or stupid or so thick skinned |
that he can stand out against the clearly
made-up public opinion of the United |
Lament near seventy years ago, The |
thunders of heaven are sometimes heard |
to roll in the voice of united people"
The New York journal.
The New York Journal says: "AIger is |
down. When the wind blows through the |
garden it Is the rottenest fruit that falls |
first Anger now, Otis next. Then, perhaps, |
Corbin, and then, pattering down too swift |
ly to count. the whole worthless lot of War |
Department incompetents and negligents |
that have brought the nation to shame and |
smea red discredit on the Incompatible |
valor of American troops. The Journal |
heartily cOngratulates the administration |
and the American people on this suspicious |
beginning of reform. 1t would be easy to |
take an ungracious view of the situation. |
1t would be easy to say that the President |
was responsible for Algerism, that there |
would probably have been beef scandals If |
Alger had never been inside the War De- |
partment, that sons of somebodies were APP |
pointed by Mr.. Mckinley himself, that |
Shafter and Otis would have made their |
under any Secretary, and that the |
anti-Schley intrigue was worked up in a |
that Alger never touched But |