The Montgomery advertiser., 1908-11-12

we are Tree to say that We misappre- hend the meaning of the term. That misnt on the part of The Times, how ever. does not distract from the force of the article we have copied. And 1t will not he amiss. we think, to refer more explicitly to one portion of The Times editorial-that which speaks of the action of the President in com polling certain officers and men to fol- low him on a thoroughly foolish ex- cursion. From The Kansas City Journal Republican newspaper, we copy this account:
 It appears that the President gave no notice of the trying ordeal to which ho subjected the army officers. He merely mere in'ised them to take a walk any special prepd ration for the outing. The President was in the pink of con- dition and dressed properly for tl,e oc- casion. For three hours and fifteen minutes he led the procession over tho toughest kind of country. and as n final cruelty plunged 1t into broad stream So deep. in places that some of the shorter officers were forced to swim. while the President stood on the opposite bank laughing heartily | enough of that kind of entertainment even for MT. Roosevelt. but he Ied the dripping men for several miles further in the frosty air Of a November da3 shivering from the cold. the President deliberately got Into his warm carriage and was whisked back to the White House, while the suffering officers btd to wait a long and painful time for belated street car.
 This Is d brief statement of the lnt- est alteration of this well bred President, and to refer to 1t as "a tool ish excursion" is a misapplication of terms. 1t was a brutal exercise of power and authority for which there is not shadow of excuse. "It was" to quote again from The Journal. "so unreasonable, SO uncalled for and so barbarous that one Is well justified If he wonders if the President was in his proper senses. It Is all very well for the American President to copy the absurd antics of Emperor William in personally leading troops into danger, but it is beyond all reason to expose men to needless sufferings that imperil their health and lives. The affair might have had some semblanee of fairness if the President had remained to take street car with the chilled officers, but he hurried back to the White House in warm carriage and thus es- capped the danger of pneumonia to which the rest of the party was ex- posed. Perhaps some will laugh at this performance as a good joke on the officers, but the sober-minded American people will brand 1t as an outrage and an imposition upon honorable men of the army. If any of them sicken and blame?"
 The Presidents only object, so far as we can see. was to show off his possession of unusual animal powers, as if that were part of the presidential duties, and at the same time to have some fun" with the officers of the army by subjecting them to a trial of endurance of which they had no pre- vious notice and for which they were not in any sense prepared. It was such an unheard of and wholly mex cusable performance that, as The Journal says, the reader wonders If Roosevelt was in his proper sense," by which we suppose our contemporary means to imply that he was not sober.
 If such brutal and utterly foolish an- tics are to be expected from a we'll bred President may Heaven deliver the country from the infiction of an ill., bred one.