| Show ON THE WRONG TRACK the tribune of Friday Priday July 8 contains a communication from general penrose in which he alternately takes the news itself and then some one presumably connected with it to task for an editorial article which appeared in these columns on tuesday last the article was entitled brave boys are they referring to the work of our 4 troops in front of santiago the chief objection which the general seems to urge is that the volunteer soldiers are praised at the expense of the regulars if he will read the article once more and carefully he may be induced to take a different view the one taken in the tribune article inclining too much to obliquity for the production of a mili military man to be sure the word volunteers was used and regulars was not but it in ie to be hoped the general will give us credit notwithstanding the general ignorance imputed of having intelligence enough to know that there were arid and are many soldiers of the regular army on the field spoken of and that of necessity many of them figure in every action because of receiving praise all the time they need no special praise while those who have been ugly untried but being tried are not found wanting being more than anything else the cynosure of the occasion demand something in the way of a separate mention the general has singled out two sentences which alone answer the purpose of an objection jec tion and overlooked all the rest of the matter which would nullify such objection and upon this he makes an appeal to the public for an unfriendly judgment against this newspaper undoubtedly the volunteers were mentioned in contradistinction from the machine soldiers against whom they were fighting why not further along is not the whole american troop brought into the reckoning by the statement ement that for the first time the personality of the anglo saxon was brought in contact with that of the descendants of ancient rome the result being the demonstrated superiority of the former A little further along even that expression to la broadened out into a reference to the personal bravery and coolness of the american people and so on the point sought to be made was that the experiment which the whole world was watching to see the result of was a success the experiment being the bringing of an improvised army any in battle against seasoned machine soldiers everybody knew what the result would be it our regular forces had been pitted against ai the more mechanical fighters with the odds in favor of the latter being not too great but nobody knew exactly how the new recruits gathered hurriedly together and indifferently drilled and prep prepared axed for the struggle would deport themselves we all know now and Ws W s paper took particular to join in the glad acclaim which went up throughout the land because ott af having shown the world that we dont need to impoverish our people to maintain great standing armies that a small one will do because and a loftier loi fitler tribute could not mot be paid the regulars the new trooper is a regular as soon as he faces the enemy in an issue of the news a few days before the publication complained of the editorial statement was made that the fl fighting in front of santiago demonstrated one thing clearly that there was waa no thing as raw american sold soldiers leTs they were veterans from the beginning and this has been its attitude all along since the contest began it is hardly a just criticism to make that because a certain quantity is not named every time a certain other quantity Is spoken of the he former is thereby excluded in maly many oases cases and particularly in this case cape the context of the matter itself and the general tone of the publication are a guidance which speak as plainly as though specific monition mention were made A man of general Penro Pen roses aes high standing should not be in such haste to condemn or to ignore the natural trend ot a newspapers articles end and base his objections upon detached sentences wrenched from their connections and a strained atral ned and unreasonable conclusion placed upon them this paper has ever held him in the highest esteem and was always glad to afford him any courtesy within its power to bestow its columns would cheerfully have been opened to any communication he had to make upon this or any amt other subject so that he was not compelled to go elsewhere re to obtain a hearing xo no matter thi ats conclusions savor more of hastiness than of deliberation he could have had the benefit or otherwise of them in his own language st at the proper place for fior it that he saw fit to go elsewhere Is his hils undoubted right and that he went out of hla his way to cast wholly uncalled l for reflections upon writers for th this paper will not be noticed at all in conclusion there is but this to say if the general will kindly withhold further criticism of this paper until he finds something in it derogatory of the arms and achievements of the united states all hands will be better satisfied |
