Atlanta semi-weekly journal. (Atlanta, Ga.) 1898-1920, 1917-02-23
Frederick Funston.

Deep and sincere is the grief of the nation at
the death of General Frederick Funston A man
who has served his country long and we'll has
passed. While his services of the substantial
and enduring kind, they also had that highly dra-
matte quality which fixed the attention strongly
and endeared him to the hearts of young and old
His was life
"of moving accidents by flood and field
"Of hair-breath scapes in the imminent deadly
breach"
He a soldier who had learned to fight by
fighting. He rose to eminence did the marshals
of Napoleon. His promotions came to him for gal
lantry on the field of battle, for conspicuous and
noteworthy success in most difficult undertakings.
When the issue and the circumstance drew round
about an unbroken wall, which said, Nothing more
can be done about it," it General Funston who
denied its truth and always found way out.
Though in his youth his career not directed
toward the army yet inevitably his disposition of
daring and his fondness for life of action and the
accomplishment of the seemingly impossible, des-
tined him for service where the need of his country
was most acute and where fearlessness directed by
intelligence would have its best reward and be
fraught with the fruitful results to the nation
Before he wore the uniform of the United States
army, his personal achievements had gone from the
subduing of DULLES and crazy DRINKS in the rough
life along the western railways to a perilous canoe
trip back from the Kondike and to death by thirst
narrowly averted in Death Valley where he went as
a member of United States botanical expedition
His services for the Cuban rebels between 1896
and 1898 gave him his first real experience in war
There he took upon himself the most daring of all
the exploits that were daily occurrences the fierce
guerrilla warfare waged then between the Cuban
patriots and their Spanish oppressors. The coming
of the war between the United States and Spain
found him therefore, already trained, already
tested, already seasoned in warfare in tropical
countries, already familiar with the half barbarous
methods and practices used by the Spaniards and
by their subjected colonists
General Funston found service in the Philip
pines and his magnificent feat of the capture of
Agunaldo without the loss of a is still one of
the most brilliant and most striking achievements
of American history. His capture of the savage
chief was but a climax a long series of danger
inviting achievements, from the swimming of trop-
ical rivers to the rushing of entrenched native
forces.
No unimportant part of the service of his career
spent in the expedition to Vera Cruz and later
into Mexico. Here his GOODNESS, his knowledge of
Spansh-American conditions enabled him to hold
steadily and surely the hand of frmness and the
hand of restraint that had been enjoined upon
him by President Wilson
Because of his long and distinguished service
to the nation his loss is felt to be great but espe-
cially is it lamentable at this particular time when
this country is just beginning the serious task
of bringing into being army fit and adequate
for defending its immense lines of and its in
termnable lines of boundary from all possible at
lacks by any nation whatsoever. Such man as
General Funston by the magic of his name and the
greatness of his achievements could have been of
nestmable value in shaping such an army to the
needs Of the nation. The nation, therefore, sounds
its requiem for him in Acknowledgement of his he
roic life and with a sense, too, of its own ire
parable loss
What we need is Belgian relief commission
for New York City.