The Washington times. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1902-1939, 1903-06-13
Gen. Wilson and Gen. Wood.
A Shocking Lack of Military Discipline
Shown by the Former.

In his address to the graduating
class of the Wilmington Military
Academy, the other day, Gen. James
II. Wilson said:
1t is perfectly certain that in that service
1.-THE navyl no doctor OF medicine, however dis
tinguished, will ever be jumped the heads
OF either the captains the admirals 1t is
perfectly certain, also, that whatever may be
done in the army, no outsider-yolunteer OF
mere political leader-will ever be put in
command of an American battleship or feet.
We take the report of General Will
sons speech from the New York
Sum-" which makes a speciality just
now of filings at Brig. Gen. Leonard
Wood. The substantial accuracy of
the "Sun's" report has not been ques-
toned IN any quarter, as far as we
have been able to ascertain. 1t must
be supposed, therefore, to represent
fairly the views of Maj. Gen. James
Harrison Wilson, Z. S. A., retired.
General Wilson, we say, was adj
dressing the graduates of military
academy, advising them not to decline
an appointment to either West Point
OF Annapolis, If it were offered to
them. Both institutions, In his opin-
ion, were on par, as far as the edu-
cational facilities they offered were
concerned; but the Naval Academy,
he thought, would be the better Of the
two for young man to choose, be-
cause the navy, he said, "held out
greater inducements and more GER
tain rewards for merit than the mill
tary service" And then he ended by
his allusion to General Woods trans
fer from the medical staff to the line
already quoted.
General Wilson has rendered dis
tinguished military service. But that
was nearly forty years ago. He re-
signed his commission in the regular
army In 1870. That, too, was thirty
three years ago. Yet, In 1898, at the
outbreak of the war with Spain, he
was not averse to accepting com
mission as major general, though he
had then not seen service Of any kind
for twenty-eight years
Now, when we consider that in
those twenty-eight years the art of
war had undergone changes as radical
as those which marked the evolution
of a Krag- Jorgensen from the old
time fintlock, we cannot bring our
selves to believe that the appointment
of an active surgeon to command
active in the sense that he had served
In the army without interruption up
to the time of his transfer from the
staff to the hne-is any worse, or
more tainted by politics" than the
resurrection of flintlock general to
conduct campaign against Mausers
and smokeless powder in Cuba, or
Porto Rico, or China. On the con-
trary, we think it is infinitely better.
For one thing, General Wood has
never furnished SO shocking an exam
pie of INSTRUMENTATION as has General
Wilson in this address to the grad
yates Of the Wilmington Military
Academy. General Wilson was open
ly criticising the President, his mill
tary superior, for making a certain
appointment which in General
Wilson's-opinion the President
ought not to have made. We have no
doubt that many officers of the army,
possibly a great majority, think as he
does and bitterly resent today the
preferlnent of General Wood, but
none that we heard of ever went SO
far as to assail openly the Com
for exercising his
Judgment rather than follow the lines
of the army list.
The trouble with General Wilson Is