The Montgomery advertiser., 1902-02-20

washington, Feb. 1s.-Ths President to- day made the following statement pup | lie:
 l White House, Feb. 10. i0o1 | I have received the application of Ad- miral Schley and the answer thereto from the Navy Department. have ex-
 amined both with the utmost care - we'll as the preceding appeal to the Sec retary of the Navy. I have read through ! ali the testimony taken before the court and the statements of the counsel Tor Admirals Sampson and Schley; have ex- ! amined all the ofiicial reports or every kind in reference to the Santiago naval l campaign, copies of the iog books ana signal books. and the testimony before | the Court of Claims. and have also per
 sonally had before me the four surviving captains of the five ships. aside from those of the two admirals. which were actively engaged at Santiago
 It appears that the Court of Inquiry was unanimous in its findings of fact and unanimous in its expressions Of opin- ion on most of its findings Of fact. NO appeal is made to me from the verdict Of l the court on those points on which IL l was unanimous. I have. however, gone carefully over the evidence on these points also am satisfied that on the | I should have specifically condemned the | failure to enforce an effectual night blockade at Santiago while Admiral | SchIey was in command. On the other | hand I feel that there Is reasonable doubt whether he did not move his | squadron with sufficient expedition from | port to port.
 The court is a unit in condemning Ad-
 mirai Schiey's action on the point where | A naf | his .'refrograde movement" when he abandoned the blockade. and his dis obedience of orders. and misstatement | of facts in relation thereto. It should
 be remembered. however. that the ma | jority of those actions which the court censures occurred five weeks or more be- fore the fight itself and 1t certainly
 seems that if Admiral schley's actions
 were censurabie. he should not have been
 left as second in command under Ad- ! miral Sampson. His offenses were in ef- | feet condoned when he was not called to account for them. .~4
 | Admiral Sampson, after the fight. in an l officiai letter to thes Department, alluded \ for the first time toS Admiral Schiey's | sreprehensible conduct.' six weeks pre-
 viously. If Admiral schley was guilty of reprehensihle conduct of a kind which
 called flor such notice from Admiral
 Sampson. then Admiral Sampson ought not to have left him as senior officer of the blockading squadron on the 3rd of
 July, when he (sampson) steamed away on his proper errand of communication with General Shafter.
 | We can, therefore. for our present | purposes, dismiss consideration of so
 much of the appeal as relates to any thing except the battle. As regards this. the point raised in the appeal Is between Admiral Sampson and Admiral Schley as to which was in command. and as to
 which was entitled to the credit if either | of them was really entitled to any un-
 usual and pre-eminent credit, by any
 special exhibition of genius, skill and | courage. The court could have consid- cred both these questions. but as a mat | ter of fact it unanimously excluded evi- | dence offered them and through its Prcsi- | dent announced its refusal to hear Ad- miral Sampson,s side at all; and. in view of such exclusion. the majority of the
 court acted with propriety in not express ing any opinion on these points. The
 matter, however, has been commented on by the President of the court. More | over, it is the point upon which Admiral | Schley, in his appeal. lays most stress and upon which he expressly asks me to | consider I have, therefore, carefully | investigated this matter also and have informed myself upon 1t from the best
 sources of information at my command. The appeal of Admiral Schley to me Is not as to this. The chief point he raises is really an appeal from the de- | cision of the Court of Inquiry. Five | sixths of the appeal is devoted to this question of command and credit. that Is. | to matter which the Court of Inquiry
 did not consider. It is in effect an appeal ! from the action of President Mckinley
 three years ago, when he sent in the rec concentrations for promotion for the va | rious officers connected with the Santiago ] squadron, basing these recommendations
 upon his estimate of the credit to which | the officers were respectively entitled. l What I have to decide, therefore, Is whether or not President Mckinley did | injustice in the matter. This necessarily l involves a comparison of the actions of | the different commanders engaged. The | exhaustive official reports of the action leave little to be brought out anew; but
 as the question of Admiral Sampson's l right to be considered in chief command, which was determined in his favor by President Mckinley and later by the | Court of Claims, has never hitherto been | officially raised. deemed it best to se- cure statements of the commanders of | the five ships (other than the Brooklyn and New York the iagships of the two Admir- alS) Wnicn were actlVeIy engaged III | the fight
 Admiral Philip is dead I quote extracts | from his magazine article on the fight, written immediately after 1t occurred, | closing with an extract from his letter to | the Secretary of the Navy of February | zi 1899:
 Tt was the blackade that made the | battle possible. The battle was direct consequence of the blockade and upon | the method and effectiveness of the blockade was very largely dependent the | issue of the battle.
 ." Under the orders of Admiral l Sampson the blockade was conducted
 with a success exempiified by the result. = When the Spanish Admiral at last made his dash to escape. we were ready ready with our men. with our guns and with our engines. It was only | few minutes after We had seen the leader of the advancing squadron that 1t became apparent tfat Cerveras plan was to run | his ships in column westward In an ef- | fort to escape ".% Before he had fairly found himself outside the Moro, | the entire blockading squadron-Indiana. | Oregon. Iowa, Brooklyn and Texas-was pumping shell into him at such a rate | as virtually to decide the issue of the | battle in the first few moments. All our | ships had closed in simultaneously.
 | .'s Then occurred the incident