The Birmingham age-herald., 1902-06-10
Washington Day by Day


 foreigners and all thoughtful native Am orleans as being supremely ridiculous.
 This Imaginable thing in human govern ment is the provision that the President of the United States is the commander in-chief of the army and navy of the United States, and the governor of each state Is the commandership of the ''mili- tary and naval forces" of that state.
 If ever there was "Pinafore" in actual life 1t Is this, 1t Is this
 The present resident of the United States is no more a soldier than "a sheep are a goet," to use the phrase of some comic opera heard when one was more ignorant than nova playgoing fool But President Roosevelt can stay in the saddle on a good, quiet amiable family horse. All the yarns you read about the President going out for his daily gallop' are utter rubbish. He wouldn't gallop an Alabama mule to the plow-field he couldn't; he would fall off.
 Therefore, when President Roosevelt un- dertakes to review" or inspect high school boys, collegians, or the militia, he braces himself up in a frock coat that fits him miserably in the back, tall silk hat and pair of eyeglasses, and with an unspellable "?-2-?-?-u-m-m-p he calls himself to order and the fun be- gins. Truly you never in the whole course of your life saw anything quite so funny, unless you have seen a governor of Alabama reviewing" the national guard.
 Yet 1t Is secretly said and universally believed that President Roosevelt is him. self personally giving instructions for the carrying on of the war in the Philippines; it is alleged upon high authority that he issued the order which 'Hellfire" Smith carried out in subjugating Samar. to kill all Filipinos even ten years old. with result that the once populous and pros porous island of Samar is practically de- populated, there being nobody left but starving old women.
 It is said that the orders which have resulted in the killing of three hundred thousand Filipinos were issued by the President personally, and that this fact will be published to the whole world as soon as General Miles is forcibly retir- ed. In other words the man who Is not and never has been a soldier, wearing his ill-fitting frock coat and his tall silk hat, has issued the orders for the mon- strous murder of FiIipinos.
 Some weeks ago, as newspaper readers will remember, it was officially stated in the press dispatches that "the issue has joined between the administration and General Niles and that General Miles would have to go. It Is aid that the original of that dispatch, in MT. Roose- velts handwriting, is on file in the of fee of the Associated Press. Its appear ance in the newspapers caused consterna- tion among inc sober and acknowledged leaders of the Republican party in con- gross, and early in the day of its pub lication Representative Dalzell and Sem ators Frye, Hanna, Dietrich and others hurried to the White House and soon suc- ceeded in persuading the president that 1t would be ruinous to forcibly retire General Miles.
 Miles knows too damned much." the presidents advisers declared in chorus, and the president agreed with them without much effort. Then he caused 1t to be stated that Miles would be allowed to serve out his time. But that Is doubt full. Miles will be retired within a week from now, or immediately after the No vember election. and when he is passed to the retired list he will make revela- tions to all the people that will cause the world to shudder.
 At least the hundred thousand Filipinos have been killed, and yet a horde of fool Americans howl about British amnesty to the Boers! Why. the Boers have been in a paradise compared with the Fill pinos. The stars and stripes are the em- blem of outrage. oppression and murder, while the union jack has spelled mercy! Kitchener has been a savior as com pared with "Iell-fre" Smith. The Brit ish government gave fifteen million dol lars outright to restore and stock the farms of the Boers and an additional fif- teen million dollars loaned to the Boer farmers at per cent, with almost count less years in which to repay the debt.
 To blackened, barren, ruined, desolated Samar, whose people tried to defend their homes and thereby displayed the highest order of patriotism, the United States gives nothing, lends nothing, but having killed all the inhabitants except the old women, leaves them a tribute of starva- ton to the glory and goodness of Amer ican valor and the unspeakable blessings brought by the stars and stripes-the real sign of oppression and starvation. Here in we have the difference between the broad humanity of the British and the brutal inhumanity of the Americans.
 It is given to me by an army officer of high rank and great deeds that some what more than 60 per cent of the off cers who have been permanently ap- pointed to the American army since the close of the Spanish-American war have been Southerners. and yet President Roosevelt found it in his heartlessness on Decoration Day at Arlington to de- nounce all these and their immediate ancestors-all the people of the South This knight in buckram who is comman- der-in-chief of the army and the navy stopped so low then, waded so deep into the mire of demagogy, that every true Southern heart is still hot with nameless resentment against him who would be- foul and islander the Southerners living and the Southerners dead, All the con