Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 11, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 January 1916 — “I SAW.” [ARTICLE]

“I SAW.”

Chicago Record Herald. A minister who recently made arc address in; this city on the “Other Side of the Preparedness Program” has received a letter from a writer describing himself as a member of the First Illinois Infantry durihg the Spanish-American war. And the writer says this, among other things: I saw 5,000 men in Springfield, many in citizens’ clothes, without military equipment, without adequate medical assistance or traing in the commissary department. I saw the results of the indifference to Hie needs of a protecting force in Ohickamauga. I saw men die there o? preventable disease. I Aaw the disbursing department go "to pieces for the lack of men who knew how. We need to pay more attention to this sort of evidence and less to mere theorizing. One “I saw” from a good witness is worth a thousand “I hope nots” from even a better one. We must face things as they are; we must shape our national course in accordance with the mountain facts of experience rather than the 9oft illusions of hope and imagination.