The midland journal. (Rising Sun, Md.) 1885-1947, 1906-03-23
WASHINGTON LETTER.

by the President, Secretary Root of the
State Department, Speaker Cannon,
Senator Lodge, Representative Adams
and other prominent men who are urging
much needed reforms in this branch of
the Government. The Consular Reform
Convention is composed of representative
business men from every part of the
country and the object of its meeting
this year is to bring about the passage of
Consular bill in Congress which will be
more sweeping in its reforms in the SER
vice than the emasculated affair that rec
emily was reported from the Senate. Sec
rotary Root who is deeply interested and
most active in his efforts to bring about
reforms said to the convention: "We
want service now in which no man can
remain unless he does his work and does
it well. We want men who have not
burned out the fires of ambition and use-
fulness in other pursuits but who will find
useful, digni6ed and honorable vocation
and commercial interests abroad He
said also that be believed Congress TO be
intimately and accurately responsive to
the public will and that if the people OF
the country really and anxiously desire
the enactment of any legislation that be-
yond doubt this legislation will be en-
acted. Therefore it puts III the hands OF
manufacturers, merchants and all those
interested in seeing this country assume
its high place among the commercial
nations the responsibility for seeing that
Congress enacts laws in regard to the
Consular service that will make it efficient
and reliable.
The President who embraces every op-
portunity to say word for the reform of
the service said to the convention Thurs.
day: II feel most strongly that in the
Consular service which stands entirely
apart from the Diplomatic service proper
entrance should be made by law into the
lower grades and that the higher grades
should be filled by gradual process of
wedding and promotion; remembering.
gentlemen, that the wedding out process
shall not be interfered with. 1t is not
any too easy to get rid of kindly natur-
ed, elderly incompetent at best and if
you add to the difficulty by law he then
stays permanently"
~
The recent Philippine engagement in
which five hundred Moros were killed by
troop of Americans led by General
Leonard Wood has provoked an immense
amount of hysteria, especially in Con-
gress. Among the five hundred savages
killed were some women and children
and though General Wood has written
message concerning the affair which is
satisfactory to the President few men in
Congress and few newspapers antipa.
thetical TO the Administration are trying
to make scandal out of the affair. AS
General Wood explained, and as all read
ers of the progress of England in Egypt
as told by historians and in poetry by
Kypling, these savages placing small
value on the women of their tribes use
them frequently as shields in a fight.
The women on the other hand, unused to
having hats taken off for them in ele-
vators and to being treated as a superior
order of being. take their places beside
the men in battle and fight with the same
fanatical frenzy as their husbands and
brothers. In some cases they go about
the fields after an engagement finishing
the work of slaughter that the men have
begun or hacking up the bodies of the
dead. AS General Wood explains many
of the women were dressed like men ard
could not be distinguished from them,
and that some of the fighters carried their
small children in their arms as shields
while they fought. That it would have
been impossible for General Wood to
have engaged in the fight at all without
killing women and children is obvious
and that he and our soldiers could have
fiendishly sought out women and chill
dren for the purpose of butchering them
is uncomfortable to the American mind
John Sharp Williams of Mississippi and
Representative JOKES of Virginia made
speeches in the House Thursday in de-
nuncation of General Wood, characteriz.
ing the affair as I" blot on the country"
For some reason General Wood has suf.
fered more from the prejudice of most
unjust type than almost any man who
has rendered services to. the country.
While he was in command in Cuba he
was accused of many forms of serious
MISUNDERSTANDING of his superiors,
falsehood, in claiming credit for accom-
plishments made Of others, and Of accept