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Show i WILL DOUGLAS BE DESERTED? Doubtless the Utah senatorial delegation felt a thrill of self-adulation and political pride when the two batteries at Fort Douglas were deported to Fort Russell, Wyoming. They perhaps felt that with such a superb organization as the National Na-tional Guard built up by Cutler the Sad, no other " i iHHHHI militant body was needed in these parts. Meanwhile the old post one of the most pic-turesque pic-turesque in all the west, is reduced to but a frag-ment frag-ment of a regiment, and most of the buildlnga present such a dilapidated front that 'they have jH been condemned as unfit for further occupancy. There is the most imperative necessity for im-piovements im-piovements at the post, and yet not a single cen-time cen-time has been appropriated by the govenment for the needed repairs and new construction. This merely shows one of two things, either that the Utah senatorial delegation is utterly with-out with-out influence at the capital, save for securing fat political berths for sycophants, or that they have been grossly negligent in looking after the inter-ests inter-ests of the local post. With all its natural strategic and other advant-ages, advant-ages, there appears on the surface no earthly rea-son rea-son why Fort Douglas should not be a brigade post. Were the state ably and infiuentially repre- H sented in the senate, this might have been achiev-ed achiev-ed during the present session. But apparently absolutely no interest has been taken in the mat-ter mat-ter by the Utah senators, except that they made a belated scurry to the war department long after they were powerless to act, and after this journal had called their attention ito the imminent needs of the post and its prospective depletion in favor of Fort D. A., Russell. The present evacuatoin and dilapidated condition at the Utah post, compared with the big appropriation for and improvements jH at Fort Russell, should form a more or less vivid picture to the Utah senators in the barrenness of their own work at the Capitol and the influence and industry of Wyoming senators. If those condemned buildings should collapse, or a fire break out that would annihilate the whole post, possibly the senior senator from Utah would wake up long enough to think of something be-sides be-sides holding on 'frantically to that senate' seat which the whole nation is anxious to kick him out |