Show THE presidents withdrawal thim THE absolute withdrawal by president C cleveland of the acceptance formerly given by him to the invitation to visit st louis during the grand army encampment camp ment there is as clever hn an exhibition of excellent tact coil coupled pled with perfect dignity as anything we have read of in all his history and he is noted as being peculiarly happy in that line of deportment elsewhere in impression in the regular telegraphic columns will be found comments on the subject and in yester days paper was the letter of f mayo frances and others of st louis and president Clev elands reply thereto together with a complete statement of the case from ali faist st to last it will be remembered that a few hot heads among the G A K R led on by general tuttle of iowa expressed hostile sentiments regarding the plan to have the soldiers honored honore by the presence of the national executive and they represent a class wb whose 08 e mccu occupation pation would be gone if sectional strife were buried as all dead things ought to be so when an opportunity occurs to fan a previously unseen ember the task is at once prosecuted with a wholesale energy worthy a better cause and in this particular instance they utilized the fact that mr cleve lands name was not on the army rolls of the war of the rebellion altho although an able bodied man all the time the alve fact that the great majority of the eu eg gible male citizens of the country and some of them very prominent ones whose loyalty was levei never questioned were in the same position exactly made this little straw through which comfort was sought to be drawn look more like a subterfuge an excuse tor for offering the president a coarse and vulgar affront because he is a democrat afa and they are republic republicans cans than anything else and explanations and self seif solicited interviews thronged thron ged the channels of public information for a while like logs in the kennebec during the lumbering season then came the flig episode with thi the details of which our readers are already ready quite familiar it was a pretty tenuous sort of substance to conjure up political claptrap clap trap withal but it was seized at with the avidity of a drowning man grasping at a straw com mander in chief fairchild unloaded anathemas ana themas amounting amoun tina almost to blasphemy upon the devoted head of the resident Kes president ident and his advisers and the tray blanche and sweetheart of the following snarled in tuneful accompaniment pani ment of the big growl well the esprit du coros cores worked up by that incident had about evaporated and upon its collapse all eyes were turned toward washington to see what the head ot of the nation was going to do in the premises re realizing that it would never go do tor for him to assume a tone even flavored with the apologetic nor yet to boorishly say nothing and keep away if he e has spoken now and nd his speech is so apropos and to tt tae point that to take from or add to it so much as a word would mar its symmetry it is not the humble excuse of one who feels the justice of the reproach nor the labored labore cl explanation of one who has been defeated in a wrong position ion but simply an announcement that he cannot afford to submit to indignity because of the position he holds if nothing else and that under the circumstances cum stances the good people of st louis will excuse him for not attending pursuant to their generous indica t ton on for which he returns kind t thanks 1 an ks the araud grand army is an organization composed mainly of patriotic they would show their wisdom wise by assuming the control of affairs which naturally belongs to them as the majority and sitting down on the loudmouthed loud mouthed demagogues who seek to control every th thing ing in their own interest when t they he y are permitted to drill drift so far in the direction of folly as to offer an unprovoked aff affront rout for political effect to the comma ader in chief of ef ane army and navy of the united states the grandeur of the organic organization a takes flight at once andl a brabble seems to appear where we have a right to look for loyal and chivalric soldiers the great bulk of the citizens ot of st louis are already vastly indignant at this to them humiliating outcome and will make the themselves melves substantially heard from later on As it is it if the ones who provoked the friction have not already raised a demon which they cannot control the escape from such a situation will be very f fortunate ort |