Arizona republican., 1902-08-02
PHOENIX, ARIZONA. AUG. 2. 1902

The people and newspapers who are | always delighted to find an excuse for
 assailing the American | DOWN soldier and who take a | WITH THE SD cial pleasure in | PEN painting the pensioner SIONER! as a fraud, have seized |
 with enthusiasm upon some figures made public a few days ago in reference to the relative num- Der of applications for pensions rom regulars and volunteers. The figures in question cover five regiments of regulars and five regiments of Volun- teers, who were on duty during the Spanish war; The tables were not made public by the pension bureau, but were gathered by some investigator who evidently proposed to show that the average volunteer soldier of the late war is a pension 'grafter For comparison this patriot took the First District of Columbia regiment, the Ninth Massachusetts, the Thirty-thlrd Michigan, the Twenty-fourth Michigan and the Eighth Ohio volunteers, and the Sixth, Seventh, Thirteenth. Six teenth and Twenty-fourth regiments of United States infantry.
 With proper ideas of leading to sensational climax, it is first stated that the volunteers had no killed, no wounded and no missing, while the five regiments of regulars had a total o1 93 killed, All wounded and 40 missing Then the "clincher" is introduced, in the form of pension statistics. It is shown that the five regiments of vol unteers have filed pension claims to the number Of 2,997, while but 164 ap- plications have come from the men who made up the stated regiments of regu- lars The conclusion is drawn that the regulars are too self-respecting to ap- ply for pensions when they are not de- served, but that no such scruples inf1u- ence the volunteers. And even the Chicago Tribune jumps at this conclu- sion, and thus comments on the fig ures:
 Tt is hard to see on just what grounds the volunteer pension claims
 
 teers had a good deal of sickness much more than the regulars. Neither they nor their officers knew the game so well as the regulars did. Conse- quently they were not so well able to take care oi themselves. They were unseasoned men. Even this cOnSidera- tion, however, will not account for the difference between the 2,991 claims made by the unscathed regiments and the 764 made by the regiments which really sustained losses. Does the pen sion claim agent find it harder to reach the regulars? Or do the regulars take military service so much as matter of course that they do not think of ap- plying for governmental reward unless they really stand in need of it? What ever the answers to those questions may be, there can be no doubt about the impression which the bare figures leaves on the mind of the reader.
 The Tribune uncovers the simple so- lution of what is no puzzle at all, but it does not dwell on the common sense explanation which is at once apparent Every newspaper reader still remem- bers well the history of the volunteer camps in the south. and it is not nec- essary to repeat details which horri- fled the whole country. Typhoid fever and other malignant diseases in cpl demic form practically disabled whole companies. The regulars who went to Cuba and took part in the actual fight ing were infinitely better situated than the helpless volunteers who remained in camp throughout the long, hot sum- mer of 1S9S It is undoubtedly true, as the Tribune suggests, that the volun- teers suffered from their ignorance o1 proper camp sanitation. They were victims still more of the stupidity an( ignorance of their officers Official in quiries developed the fact that there were hundreds of cases of fever di rectIy traceable to the surrounding filth. At all events, the volunteers suffered ten-fold more sickness thar the regulars-and impaired healtf from disease is regarded by the law with as much consideration as i'm paired health from wounds. The wholt anirnus behind the publication of thes' statistics is evident from the carefu failure to give the number of deaths and the number of cases of sickness suffered by the five regiments of vol unteers complained of.
 It may be that here and there appli cat.on for pension have been made b, men whose ailments do not justify
 position on the pension rolls. Sucl things will be as long as human natur is what it is. But the soldier hat te rejoices more over the discovery of on