Wheeling register. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1878-1935, 1901-02-09
ARMY PROMOTIONS.

vi
The Fourteenth street organ editor
tally quotes the New York Times, as
follows:
The President has been suspected and
accused at times, of prostituting the civil
service to various Irrelevant considerations
which should properly be subordinate TO
the primary consideration OF efficiency.
If we remember rightly, this accusation
has proceeded also from ourselves All the
more reason why we should bear witness
that the President has not prostituted the
military service, to the best of our knowl-
edge and belief, to political considerations,
since. and even before, the time at which,
under the pressure of public opinion, Sec
rotary Alger was absolutely forced out.
This is really, fellow citizens, a very de-
cent kind of government under which we
are living.
Were it not for the fact that the
Times is as hide-bound in its McKin-
leyism as the Fourteenth street or
gan we would supect it of broad sar-
casm. Mr.. Mckinley has not only
prostituted the military service to pro-
mote his own political ambition, but
by his appointments of gross incom-
petents in the volunteer service, re-
sulting in the camp horrors which
scandalized the country, he sacrificed
ten times as many soldiers as were
killed in actual battle throughout the
Spanish war. such was his open pros
titution of the military service at the
outbreak of the war, when ne sought
by the appointment of sons of some
bodies. to reward political servitors or
to place Others under obligation for
: the future.
Since the war ne has pursued a pol
icy of favoritism wherever he had a
fayorite to serve. General Miles he
could not afford to ignore, while Mac
Arthur. Young and Chaffee are entitled
to promotion, the latter especially be-
cause of his distinguished services in
China. In the list of appointments to
be brigadier generals, however, at least
two names stand out prominent as ex-
amples of rank favoritism Neither
Fred Grant nor Leonard Wood are en-
titled to promotion over the heads of
far more worthy, more able and more
experienced soldiers. Grant is simply
the son of his father True he is
West Pointer, but he left the army for
more profitable civil pursuits when pro-
motion in the military service prom
Used to be slow. 1t is rank injustice
60 those who have remained in the
army and borne its drudgery, that,
now when promotion is rapid, he
should step in and take precedence of
his old classmates and comrades who
have been plodding faithfully along in
the service while he has been making
his fortune in civil life
As to General Wood while he
showed some ability as an administra-
tor of civil government in Santiago.
he knows nothing of military matters.
He is physician by profession and
was the chum and protege of the vice
president-elect He would never have
been heard of if Roosevelt had not
taken to rough riding and advertised
Wood in advertising himself. More
over his head appears to have been
turned by his elevation to the COVER
nor generalship of Cuba and he seems
to have branched out as an arrogant
and petty tyrant, following in the foot
steps of Brooke and Ludlow, who
earned the hatred ana contempt of the
Cubans.
Why should able. experienced and
working officers, who were in
the service when Fred Grant and
Leonard Wood were in pinafores. be
sighted by the President for such as
these?