The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1902-08-09

Blow Which Many Feel He Did Not
Deserve.
Wa shington Post.


There is something especially pathetic in
the return of Gen. Jacob Smith after long
and arduouS service in the Philippines only
to find that he has been arbitrarily retired
from the army. He left Manila without
suspicion of the fate i'm store for him He
had passed through the strain of a court
martial and knew that he might expect a
reprimand, though in view of the fact that
the utterance for which he was blamed had
escaped him in a moment of peculiar stress
he might have been justified in hoping for
an abatement of even that harsh sentence
On reaching San Francisco, however he
found that the verdict of the court had
been increased by the President and that
he was not only the recipient of a public
reOuke, but had been removed from the
active list of the army after a lifetime of
devoted and creditable service. Old, broken
sadly worn by the terrible hardshps in
volved in a protracted campaign under
tropical suns and against treacherous and
cruel enemies, practically an invalid and
with little prospect of restoration to even
moderate health, he came home to meet
a punishment that must have seemed to
him as unmerited he felt it to be crush
ing.
We have, of course, heard all about the
kill and burn order" No discussion of
that subject can serve any useful purpose
now. The Post has already stated its be-
lief that General Smith did not formally
issue such an order. The best information
at our disposal forces upon us the inference
that in giving his verbal instructions to
Major Waller on the eve of that fateful ex-
petition he said aloud what was in every
officers heart and what most, If not all, of
them had already openly declared. Beset
on all hands by deceit, by ingratitud and
by a ferocious cruelty without parallel in
the annals of warfare, he may we'll have
described the foes whom Waller was about
to encounter as savages deserving of the
most frightful punishment. He was not in
occupation of a cool and clustered refuge
or in any frame of mind to philosopher
about the wickednesS of man. He and his
fellow-soldiers had for months been the
victims of barbarities that shocked every
sense of humanity and made the blood of
even the mildest creature rage like fire in
his veins. They had been deceived, be-
trayed, aSSaSsinateG at every turn by the
objects of their kindness. All around them
was an evil ring of skulking murderers, of
death that could not be seen until it was
too late. There was no imaginable treach-
sacrificed There was no devilish torture
which they might not expect to suffer in
case they fell into the enemy's hands. Gen.
Smith said to Ma jor Waller concerning the
natives nothing which they had not justi-
fed by their fiendsh acts-nothing which
was not abundantly and horribly justified
soon afterward in the events of Waller S
expedition.
Perhaps he should not have spoken so
passionately. Perhaps it was his duty to
discuss those numbering devils as though
he were expOundng some clammy meta
physical abstraction. We still believe. how
ever, that he has been punished far beyond
the measure of his offense. and we assert
again that the most pathetic figure before
Jacob Smith. aged. griZzed worn by vast
ing toll and hardship. returned after years
of sacrifice and peril TO meet a blow in his
gray and sad old face.