Arizona republican., 1899-05-21
PHGNIx, MAY 2l. 1899
THE BEEF INCIDENT CLOSED.

THE 5BEEt 1NC1DEN1 CLOoED~
 The democratic journals which mOst
 aszfduously nur5ad what they termed
 the "teef scandal" ss they similarly
 nursed the exploded and now forgotten
 buzzard issue, and as they continue to
 hug the bogus imperialism issue, have
 not disappointed US in their reception
 Of the verdict Of the latest court of iE-
 quiry. With cne voice they have set
 up the shrisk Of "whitswash!" against
 the men of spotIess honor who con
 ducted the Investigation, exactly as
 they charged the eminent men com
 prfsiAg the previous court of inquiry
 with co.lusion, sJultifi-atfon and dc
 ceit. These journals charged the gov
 ernment with the hidecus crin,a and
 folly of fea5ng its army cn rotten
 and "embaImed'' beef and demanded
 a verdict of guilty. All the evidsI-e
 tenlding to lear cut the truth of their
 charges they magniffed and displayed.
 and much Of that which proved their
 falsity they suppressed. If We had to judge by the shanJsfully biased report;
 of these papers there might be room for 6isput:rlg the courts findings, but those findings were not made frCn the mutilated press accounts. They were
 based upon the testimony as a whole. which showed that out of an army of 268, 900 men, with nearly 300 regiments
 and crganizat tions ard 34,000 officers. only 147 officers representing Twenty six regiments and some 26,O00 troops --cnly one-tenth Of the aIny-fOuEI fault with the beef Eminent chemists from the leading universities and from the department Of agriculture exam ined the meats u1ed in the campaign and found TO truth in the charge Of Geieral Miles that it was "embalmed '- All that was proven was that the re- fnigerated beef after being taken from the ice in. the tropical climate spoiled quickly unless well cared for, and that the canned beef after being opened, be- cause of tke great heat, became re- pulsive in appearance and soca unpal- atab.e. It is plain that the resp0nsi- biity for such meats as spcilsld be- longed not alone to the war depart ment but as well to these who failed to care for it properly. But the main questions with which the court Of in quiry had to deal-the questions iii which the country had the greatest in terest were these to which the charges of General Mics gave rise General Miles went before an official court and refusing to be placed under oath made this assertion:
 Our soldiers at the front were fed l on beef loaded and saturated with 1 Administrations acids which made | them sick, filled the mems systems l with pdison, uniting them for fight ! ing or campaign work
 Bad as such crime would be, how | ever, a worse one was that charged by | Miles when he attributed corruption 10 ! the war department, declaring that the meats had been bought on "a pre- ] tense of experiment. '' This charge of 1 fraud was so unsupp pCrtable that when Miles appeared befora the second i board of inquiry and was put under oath he retractsd it by repudiating his previous expression and substituted quTbb1fng phrase which absolved the war department Of his own corruption charge. The other charge that the beef was Headed and saturated with chemicals in spite of Miles's asser- tion that he had Overwhelming evi- dence" to prove it, fattened out utter ly when he had his chance to sustain it with proof And be it remembered that although General Miles admits that he knew as early as August 1s5 that poisoned beef was being fed to our soldiers he made no report to the president, his only superior officer, at any time, nor to anybody except the reporters Of two or three yellow jour nals until he went before the first in quiry court on the Fist of last Decem- Der. That is to say, he believed our troops were being poisoned, to use his own expression, and never sought in a proper military way for weeks to save the men at the front from So hide ous a crime, How could an honest court with this self-confassed fact staring them in the face de anything but condemn and cersure 9 command CT so de-eIict? If they found his charges of paiso1ed meat unsustaiaej and they did 50 find them in the fact that for every enc witness who testified CT his side nine others said the army rations were gcod when properly cared for; if they found his charge of corruption in the war Ge- partment so wholly unsustained as to E