The age-herald., 1902-03-26
Washington Day By Day


 the question so much to heart7 A learned Southerner, taking notice of the incessant pleas made in this place for the Republic, writes in effect:
 ''Why plead for the Republic? Your an- cestors fought for what they believed was a democracy. You and the others have sought to hold sacred the Republic. You have never had either Republic or democracy, and now you are come to be- wall a less you have never incurred. You have had tho makeshift of Republic, and you have confounded your evanes- cent vision with your own dream of democracy. Out upon you and out with you! You love your country; you have idealized and idolized 1t, and brave praise to you; but you are blind, my boy, you are blind. Your paper Republic, which was never a democracy, Is tum- bling about your ears. and you are strik- ing out wildly for the truth. The trouble is, you do not strike the truth as you might you are scarcely old enough to see it. But your instinct Is clear and hon. est; only you do not take your instinct at It's real value. The other while you wrote that five and twenty years more would witness the final passing of the Republic. Your young hope lent wings to that fancy. Even as you wrote, the Re- public as founded by It's aristocratic fathers Washington, Jefferson, Madison and the others, was as dead as last years birds nest.
 "We are come to wretched oli- garchy," this learned Southerner con- tinues. With very young man In the Presidency, whose ideals are horses and wildcats, with rude Rough Riders some of whom are former convicts as his Ia vorites, and with an Insane opinion that he Is both soldier and sailor, too, when he is neither, we are come to the end or our row.
 "The public does not know, and does not care to know, that young Roosevelt did not lead his wild, bloodthirsty and partly convict Rough Riders up San Juan hill in that ridiculous skirmish which hired newspaper correspondents called the great battle and in which some nine or ten men were killed.
 ''The public does not know and doesn't care to know that after the sublime Rough Rider charge up the hill, during which the cowardly Seventy-frst Regi- ment of New York laid down, and the negro regiment, the Tenth Cavalry, won the victory, the immortal hero who is now President of the United States kept in the rear of his regiment, and when the slxirmish called the battle of San Juan hill was piddled out, he, the illustrious Theodore Roosevelt. walked his horse up a little rise in the ground called hill in company with a sergeant of the Fifth Cavalry!
 .'Roosevelt is a humbug. If ever pre- tense and the skilful expenditure of money upon a literary bureau worked proftably in this world it all has been worked by Mr. Roosevelt. He Is worse than poor Hayes. for whom the i'm macu- late Republican party stole the Presiden- cy. Hayes was an embecile and hls silly wife kept the public informed of 1t. Roosevelt unhappily, doesn't realize that he is an arrant humbug In some particu- lars.
 Aside from President Roosevelt's atti- tude of assuming to know everything of the science of government possible for any man to know, and a great deal not possible, assumptions not excusable in any young man-and MT. Roosevelt is probably the youngest man for his years in America-the service of the American people as represented in the army and navy through MT. Root and MT. Long has been grossly perverted to the interests of professional politicians and ringsters.
 Mir. Long succeeded as secretary of the navy the Hon. Hilary A. Herbert of Ala bama, under whose wise and just adm in- istration the old ring was powerless to do mischief. Secretary Herbert held the ringsters and slanderers of the Crown inshield type steadily in check and him. self administered the department having in charge the affairs of the navy, which he more than any other one man had suc- cessfully labored to re-create.
 But when Long came in as an office lawyer. former indifferent member of Congress, and ornamented governor of Massachusetts, a hide-bound and puritan ical radical Republican, he immediately yielded himself body and soul to the infamous ring in the navy department which ever since then has made that arm of the national war service a laugh ing stock and reproach. Long has been a mere servant of his scheming and slan- dering underllngs, and for some four years Crowninshield, the most contempt ible public servant in America, has been the master of Long and the entire de- pertinent, to the degredation and shame of the whole navy. which all the world laughs at as mere bureau for the glarf- fication of incompetent and undeserving persons such as Sampson. Chadwick and the arch-conspirator Crownnshield.
 This man Crowninshield has just been given his exceeding great reward for his treachery and venality, his systematic islander and blackguardism. by being made a rear-admral and assigned over a dozen of his superiors in rank to com mand the American squadron in Euro- pean waters. the most desirable assign m ent in all our navy This was foretold In this correspondence nearly four months ago.
 Thus Crowninshield will fly his flag in every port of Europe, and in his new uni form will parade behind King Edward