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Show Schley Should Decline. If offered the place, Admiral Schley should not accept the senatorship to succeed the late Senator Gorman. If he wants to know why, let him imagine some gifted man, say such a man as Senator Gorman, was in health appointed admiral In the navy. What would he think? What would he say? Would it not be something like this: "Why, the man could not walk a quarterdeck without exciting excit-ing the derision of every old tar who might see him. In a wreck he could not handle an oar; he could not take the sun; the chances are he would be sea-sick before crossing the bar; his presence in a fleet as an officer would be held as an insult by every educated sailor, while in the forecastle the talk would be of how difficult It sometimes is to distinguish- an admiral from a blankety blank 9 idiot!" I There is another reason why he should decline. I On any craft whore he has been abroad for many B years past he has been the commander. He may not have exercised his authority in any preten tious way, but all the time he has felt that every man aboard was subject to his orders. It would be different in the senate. No man commands there except by divine right the right of leadership, leader-ship, gained by sovereign attributes ln competition with gianfs. There is still a more important reason why ho should decline. Through long years men visiting the capitol have learned to turn their eyes to the seat occupied by Senator Gorman, certain that, whenever he arose, something which all the senate sen-ate would listen to hear, would be said. They will naturally through habit turn to that seat .for a good while to come. Does Admiral Schley wish to risk having those listeners through him disappointed? disap-pointed? H There is still a more important reason why ho should decline. In the long watches of half a century, cen-tury, facing the hurricane, the ic floes, and under the canopy of battle, Admiral Schley has written his name on that limited scroll which, beginning at Salamis and coming down by Actium and Lepanto, by the destruction of the great Armada, by the Nile and Copenhagen and Trafalgar, and thence down through "Old Ironsides" and Perry's little fleet, and reawakened by the Kearsage and Brooklyn and borne on to Manila Bay and off Santiago, still has so few names that they can all be committed to memory in half an hour; on that scroll the names of Schley is written In letters let-ters of gold, and his memory is linked with that of Themistocles, Demetrius, Octavius, Antony, John of Austria, Howard, Drake, Paul Jones, Nelson, Lawrence, Hull, Perry, Farragut, Wlnslow, Dewey, Cl'.'rk and the others. Can he afford to take the risk of tarnishing that record by accepting a place where he, untried in its duties, might fail? Can he afford to risk having the high name of the U. S. navy lowered by appearing in a placo where he might fail? Again, in his school the fashion is to right wrongs by direct methods, would not the interm- Iniable debates, the splitting of hairs, the plays for party advantages, thelegai questions and the line discriminations of lawyers, perpetually vex him and cause him to chafe continually like a caged c.igle? He had better put the bauble and tho trouble aside. |