Amador ledger., 1902-05-16
WASHINGTON LETTER.
From Our Regular Correspondent.)


The long period of waiting in the
senate is approaching an end, and
the strain, under which republican
senators and the correspondents of
the republican press have labored, is
to be remitted. The orders of Sen
ator Lodge, in his capacity of man
ager on the floor of the senate of the
Philippine civil bill, have been ''hold
your fire until you see the whites of
their eyes," but the whites of good
many democratic eyeballs are now in
view, and the first skirmish of the
republican forces was made on Fri
day by Senator Pritchard of North
Carolina. Behind the smoke of Sen
ator Pritchard's skirmish line Mr..
Lodge has been getting his big guns
into line, and today at two o'clock
they will go into action with telling
effect. The senator from Massa-
chusetts has prepared his speech
very carefully, and it is calculated
to play havoc in the democratic
ranks. MIR. Lodge will admit the
cruelties which have been practiced
in the Philippines by American SOL
diers, but he will point out that they
all occurred from one -and-a-h half to
two years ago. Then he will cite
the atrocities practiced on American
soldiers by the Filipinos, outrages
and barbarities, which, to use the
senator's own words, would make
a marble saint thirst for vengeance.
Space will not admit an enumeration
of the frightful atrocities which have
been perpetrated on the American
boys, and which have made their
comrades, crazed with the sight of
their brothers suffering, overstep,
in very few instances, the bounds
of civilized warfare. l have seen the
senator's speech, and when the
American people have read it their
horror at the pictures which have
been drawn for their imagination by
democratic partisans will be turned
to pity, and to qualification that the
American forces have shown them
selves so tolerant, so merciful, and
so well disciplined in the face of such
frightful provocation. What the
democrats have been exultingly con-
templating as magnificent material
for the campaign will be shorn of it's
oratorical flowers and made to stand
out as partisan vilitication of Ameri-
can soldiers, under the furious bat
teries of the junior senator from
Massachusetts.
The testimony of Messrs. Have
meyer and Donner, respectively pres
ident and treasurer of the sugar
trust, before the committee on re-
lations with Cuba, have failed to dis
cover the sensational facts which
have been so confidently counted on
by the opponents of Cuban recipro-
city. The statements of both these
gentlemen, made under oath, have
revealed the fact that the trust has
no holdings of Cuban sugar and that
reciprocity will operate to the dis
advantage rather than to the advan-
tage of the trust. Further delay
will obviously operate to the advan-
tage of the trust, but Cuban recip-
rocity, according to their state
ments, will not Mr. Mott, pur-
chaser of raw sugar for the COM
pany, cited with effect the results of
admitting free Porto Rican sugar as
ample evidence of the benefit to the
planters of a reduction of the tariff.
The refusal of the attorney general
to meet in conference the represent
atives of the beef trust is in entire
accordance with the views of the
president and with action already
taken by the department of justice.
Mr.. Knox has begun his suit in the
belief that the men who compose the
trust have violated the law and have