The Cordova daily times., 1921-01-15
SATURDAY, JANUARY 15, 1921
THE PRESIDENCY AS A MILITARY
 POST

When the Brazilian government gave President Wilson the honorary title of field marshal, it merely paid the president compliment. But the president of the United States is far more than field marshal He is the commander-in- of the army and navy of the United States, nor has that office been to any of his prede- cessors bare form.
 George Washington was of all men then living the best fitted to head our armies. Had the plan of 1794 been carried out-had we gone to work to build navy-Washingto would have been more than figurehead. He had called on John Barry for land service, he know something of the cruises of Paul Jones, he had cO-operated with the fleet of De Grasse. John Adams tried to rule the army, and came near disrupting it.
 Jeffersons attempt to give us navy exclusively of gunboats, was one of the worst bIunders of his life. Madison allowed his secretary of war to almost involve the government in a most injudicious quarrel with An drew Jackson. Monroes service in the army of the Revolution gave him dignity in the eyes of sol diers and seamen. The younger Ad- ans had never served, yet he had the astronomical faculty which seamen prize, and the grasp of international law all officers of merit long to have He was succeeded by the soldier boy of the Revolution, the man who had shattered the power of the Creeks, the victor of New Orleans. Van Blu ren had no military experience and Harrisop's single month gave him little chance to show his merits Tyler is not memorable. Polk chose William L. Macy as secretary of war, which is about the highest tribute that can be paid to his military insight His policy seems to have consisted mainly in offending our foremost gen erals and in finding places for politi- soldier of high merit, and his suc- cessor, Fillmore, was man of scien- tific capacity, able to enter into the engineering work of an army in peace PierCe's war record was an excellent one, his secretary of war, Jefferson Davis, was an official of energy and talent, looking, however, in the wrong direction. Buchanan, his worst enc mics being judges, showed toward the end of his term spirit that had he shown earlier would have raised his fame.
 Lincoln's fitness for the post of commander-in-chief is proved by one unanswerable statement. In that era of strife he is the great figure-he is more interesting than any fighter by land or sea-lhe looms over Grant at vicksburg and Tarragut at the mast head. His few months of Indian war fare could hardly have taught him much, but he read military text books, he sat in the telegraph office he vis- tied the camps, he talked with men from the fighting line, and Charles A. Dana says that he grew to be our greatest general. If he had not won the volunteers who came from the border states, if he had not called on Mcclellan after Pope's defeat, if he had not sustained Grant through months of clamor, would not the re- suit have been otherwise? His con- else phrases-4of the Southern Union ists with a record "Jotted down in black and white" of the gunboats that left their tracks wherever the ground was a little damp"-are better known than any dispatches from tent or cabin.
 Andrew Johnson had been a mill. tary governor at period when he risked assassination several times a day, yet we remember him in mill. tary annals chiefly because he could Rot get Stanton out of the war de.