The Billings gazette. [volume] (Billings, Mont.) 1896-1919, 1901-12-27
oeITER pIcTuMs.

oBITER DIcTUMs.
Yellowstone journal: The Sampson
people say now, that Dewey's minor
ity report, in which Schley was vindi-
Gated and given full credit for the
victory over Cevera, is only an obiter
dictum; a mere casual remark not
warranted by the rules of practice OBJ
tanning in naval courts and entirely
out of place and d~isrespectful to the
ancient and venerable sailor,men-
Ramsay and Benham-who composed
two-thirds Of the court and were
reasonably well acquainted with the
technique Of modern naval warfare
as laid down in the text books, but
with no actual experience. Dewey it
is true had oficiated as commander
in an affair of iron-clad battle ships
with the concomitants Of powder and
shells and sulphurous smoke and
bloody decks and groans of wounded,
at the end of which "the flag was still
there" and he naturally. warmed up
to the man who had stood where he
had. At the affair in Manila Dewey
was only a commodore and in debat-
ing the, Schley verdict it no doubt
came to his mind that there might
have been somewhere in the offing
on that May morning, a ranking Of
ficer who could under the rules
have sailed into the bay after the job
was done and signalled that he was
within hailing distance and conse-
quently the whole thing. Such a re-
Election must have produced a flood
of righteous indignation, calculated
to override all the rules of practice
ever formulated by a board of naval
lawyers and warranting any calibre
Of an obiter dictum.
The attitude of the Sampson people
now and all along has been this: They
know that history-the history that
endures-is not being written now.
That the story of the battle of Santi-
ago bay that will become a part of
the nations archives and be the
foundation of such a history as some
future Macauley may write, will be
found in the dry and musty records Of
the navy department, exhumed long
after this generation has mouldered
into dust. Their great endeavor is
to get the record right. This explains
why the precept under which the
Schley inquiry was held, was so clev-
erly drawn to exclude at every point
the question that was n of the main
questions to the American people;
the question of "Who was in com
mand?" OF course, the contempt
raneous judgment did not need to
know this to decide who won the bat
tie, but it is very essential in the Of
fetal record, and nowhere in this Of
fetal record as it now stands, can the
children and grandchildren of Ad-
miral Schley show that he was in
command at the battle of Santiago,
except by Dewey's obiter dictum and
even this will probably be expunged
before the naval board of strategy
gets through with it.
They say it was pure:y a captains
battle and that each commander of
a ship fought on his own hook with
out regard to any commanding officer,
but they will not permit this argu-
ment to go to it's logical conclusion,
for UP from siboney, eleven miles
away, looms the New York with
Sampson on the bridge, the admiral's
pennant flying from the peak, and
whipping from the signal halyard the
flag that read '"Take notice that l am
within hailing distance" If it had
not been for this shameful mercenary
exhibit in a moment of supreme glory,
much might have been forgiven Samp-
son; even his bombastic Fourth of
July dispatch concerning the doings
of "the fleet under MY command"
might have been explained away or
rectifed by Immediately subsequent
amplifcation, but in the light of re-
cent distributions of prize money, the
full purport of the first signal made
from Sampson to Schley after the bat
tie, is apparent in all it's hideous de-
tail. The merging of SO glorious an
event into a mere question of dollars
and cents as expressed in prize money
and the overwhelmingly too sue
cessful-to take from the real winners
of the battle their rightful share of
this bloody money, is a phase of
SIMPSONS character that the Ameri-
can people can never warm up to.
Let all other things be as they may.
Let Sampson be chief in command;
let it be admitted that it was his plans
of battle that were followed out; that
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