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VOL.13. NO. 33T -rr5?
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ESTABLISH BD IN 1886
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PRICE F1VB CENTS:
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LINCOLN. NEBR., SATURDAY, AUGUST 13, 1898.
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I OBSERVATIONS. g
The Scovil fellow who slapped Gen
eral Shafter is receiving his deserts
from the fraternity, who, without ex
ception, condemn his impudence. The
slapping was probably premeditated
and his punishment was what he de
served, but not what he expected.
He wanted to be photographed in the
saffron papers in the act of slapping
the general of the army at Santiago.
Instead General Shafter ordered him
to leave the army. The sentence is
the same to Scovil as oblivion for life.
No paperi not even tue vellowest? will
want his services any more. No gen
eral in the army will grant him the
privileges of a correspondent. His
career, which he had thought to
guild, is forever blighted. If General
Shafter had tried him by martial law
and he had received a sentence com
mensurate to his offense, he could
have posed as a" victim to military
discipline and have retained a meas
ure of dignity and consideration, but
to oe treated with contempt and to be
spat upon by other correspondents
(rhetorically) hasdestroyed his chances
for the peculiar -kind of notoriety he
was anxious to gain.
The adulation of Hobson, who went
out of his way to do a brave deed, the
successful accomplishment of which
might have prevented Schley's vic
tory over the Spanish tleet, suggests
by contrast the hundreds of brave
private soldiers who lay scattered
about in the dust and blistering heat,
famishing for water after the battle
of Santiago. Huron's transfigura
tion suggests these wounded, dying
soldiers who perished without com
plaining, because to the one is given
glory and honor and to the others a
trench and oblivion. There are very
few soldiers or officers who would re
fuse a mission which, whether it
failed or succeeded, would confer
upon the officer in command immortal
fame. Death is a small price to pay
for immortality. The real heroes of
this war are the private soldiers who
bear hardship and suffering without
complaint and who obey and die in
herds. The young brave apple
cheeked mothers' sons who trotted up
that awful lane mowed by shell at El
Cano. who fell and complained not of
neglect when twelve hours later
found them still untended by surgeons,
are heroes all the more because they
died without hope of reward. To do
a noble deed in the company of hun
dreds of other heroes deprives the
deed of dramatic setting, yet the
boys who died by hundreds were'as
brave as Hobson. who risked his life
in company with six soldiers in sight
of the world. It may be that it is un
just to blame him for his newspaper
created cult, but he was so eager to
take the place which led to fame and
the New York people are gorging him
with such large chunks of it that
these reflections on the dead boys who
lie buried in Cuban trenches may not
be unwelcome to those whose own
boys carry a gun and obey orders.
Civil service reform, like many
others, has its draw backs. Many a
competent man fail in the examina
tion and just as many hoodoos take it
with honors. Then a clerk or an em
ploye cannot be dismissed without
cause and the allegation of incompe
tency and inaptness in learning the
duties of the position and in perform
ance is too general for the satisfac
tion of a board, through the other
clerks who have to do the incompe
tent's work over again have items and
exhibits of aching backs and over
strained eyes as proofs. Under the
spoil system incomietents as well as
competeuts went in and out of office.
A fixture was unusual, fortunately for
the good of the service.- Prom the
postoffices in different parts of the
country there are many complaints of
incompetent fixtures who were able to
passu technical examination but who
lack common sense, tact and quick
n ess and every quality which distin
guishes a good clerk. No examination
tests to determine the presence of
common sense have yet been invented.
In the meanwhile men whom no
individual finds it profitable to em
ploy pass a government examination
and when once set to work "by a repre
sentative of the" government the ope
ration of the civil service rules keeps
them in to the manifest injustice of
the other employes mid the postmas
ter who must do the parasite's work.
Then the system creates an oftice
holding class whose only mitigating
character consists in not being hered
itary. Since the days of the forty
days' waiu'ering in the desert the
Levites, or officeholders have had an
eye and a hand for snaps. The spoils
system involved an annual or biennial
or quadrennial redistribution of place
and sent out a lot of only partially
atrophied men and women into the
world to earn their own living with
out the aid of a system or a pull. In
spite of these objections the civil
service rules have accomplished a
better performance by government
clerks and is thus to be prefered to
the old methods. The system is too
rigid, but that is the way with sys
tems. As to the Philippines the United
States owes the inhabitants bf that
unhappy group justice. Having de
stroyed Spanish misrule this govern
ment is under the strongest obliga
tion to replace it by the best rule yet
developed by man. The preachers
and Harvard professors who have
made it their mission to teach the
rest of this country that it is un Ameri
can to keep what we have secured by
va!or. finesse and the expenditure of
millionsof dollars, ignore the rights of
the oppressed natives of the islands.
If it can be shown that the Spanish.
French. English! German or Japanese
have a better government or one
more easily acclimated than the de
mocracy of the United States, it
would be magnanimous and high
minded on our part to renounce our
claims. French and German coloniza
tions in Africa are fairly prosperous,
but Emperor William is an anachron
ism that evolution will not long en
dure. The beneficent effect of Eng
lish influence has been shown, with
some reservations, in India, but if we
gave the Philippines to England, Ger
many, France, Ilussia, even Spain,
would prefer that we kept them.
Japan has not arrived at the period of
adolescence in self government and is
not ready, by hundreds of years, for
colonization. An international con
gress for the purpose of considering
what is best to do with the islands
would result in a wrangle among the
representatives of the powers in which
considerations touching the real in
terests of the inhabitants of the
islands would not be discussed. It Is
very difficult to decide what to do
with the Philippines; but when it Is
fully and audibly recognized that
humanity, and the obligations of a
civilized people to primitive, oppressed
natives, forbid returning the latter to
the hands of a conquered, revengeful,
cruel race, the answer is so clearly in
dicated that only a cowardly and dis
trustful congress can refuse to accept
the logic of the situation. To trans
plant a bit of sound democracy into
the orient will be like grafting a frag
ment of wholesome skin into the mid
dle of a chronic sore. If the fragment
can be connected with the vital forces
underneath the -surface that healthy
spot will gradually spread until it is
connected with the mainland and the
whole round world become a democ
racy without czar or emperor or king
or a system of caste which is worse
than the tyranny of all three com
bined. When all other paths are im
passably blocked it takes no particu
larly brilliant statesmanship to walk
in the only one left open The Philip
pines can not be returned to Spain or
presented to anv other nation without
reflecting upon the flexibility of our
own form of government and renounc
ing the obligations of victory. Re
nunciation would be cowardly, un
worthy of our traditions, our fore
fathers and our place in the proces
sion's van. President McKinley's
sturdy Americanism can be depended
upon. It is not of the thin, watery
Harvard quality, that fancies every
thing American is vulgar and to be
discouraged by all those who happen
to occupy a rostrum ora pulpit. Presi
dent McKinley likes this country and
the people that live in it. He believes
that American institutions can be
grafted and bestow upon a foreign
soil the blessings of freedom. To be a
part of the United States will mean
for the natives the establishment of a
public school system, by no means
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