Rensselaer Republican, Volume 21, Number 2, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 September 1888 — SOLDIERS’ PENSIONS. [ARTICLE]

SOLDIERS’ PENSIONS.

PRESIDENT CLEVELAND'S METHOD. OF VETOINGKTHEM. A Large Force la the Peneion Office Engaged In the Despicable Business of. Finding Flaws In the Character of the Applicants Which Will Be Published— Widows of Soldiers Not Exempt. In the mattar of soldiers,* pensions Mr. Cleveland is without shame. Not content with his sneers and Ids needless exposures of harmful habits or flaws in the morals of disabled men who served the e country well ifi its day of need, he is now engaged in> digging out the evidence to sustain his brutal attacks. The news fiQm Washington that a large force in the pension olfice is engaged in this de» picable business seemed incredible even, under the Cleveland administration. It turns out to be true. Soon the country will be treated to the proof that such a veteran was at times addicted to drink; that another was the victim of debasing habits; that another used opium to dull, the pain of his wounds; that his widow was a drunkard and undeserving; that* this other one was immoral and tliat for each and all of them he could not bring his mind to see the right of giving them, a pension. When all the proofs of these things are collected they will doubtless, be embellished as the veto messages in each case were with attempts at wit, and cruel sneers which no gentleman could bring himself to use, and which no man could conceive whose heart had even so much as throbbed with exultation at the sight of a flag. Only a man so devoid of feeling as to allow the substitute who fought for him to die in a poor-house could deal with veterans as Grover Cleveland lias dealt in his despicable veto messages.

The real ground of complaint against him is not tliat lie has been called on to interpose his. veto. In some cases liis reasons, if stated with decency and with dignity, might have seemed adequate. But the manhood of the republic cries out with hot and indignant protest against his methods, lie either forgets, or does not care, that the class lie is dealing with is in one sense poor and humble. though in a sense,, while lie can not comprehend, far more entitled to national gratitude than lie. As a result of [ service under the flag these are in. poverty, and hi their distress they turn, toward" the rich and powerful government which they and theirs helped to save. Instead of the pittance, which is all they ask, they find themselves jeered at by a president. Worse than this. Some of them find their habits, or the secrets of their lives, advertised to the country and fixed in the records of congress. An officer may have been valiant in battle to-the last degree, He may have been l’iddled-wit-h shot or broken by disease, and from either cause, after years of languishing, died in honor —and, as all the world but (! rover Cleveland counts it, honor of high degree. But if in the record it appears that he sometimes drank to excess, or that at times lie yielded to immoral habits, this low president seems to gloat over his. discoveries, and hastens to blacken the memory of men far braver and more patriotic than lie chose to be, and declares those defects to-the country as a reason why lie can not affix his great name to a hill that will keep the dead soldier’s widow or orphans from starving. Worse than this, he lias not even hesitated to attack the moral cliaracter of soldiers’ widows. Even now lie is having the confidential fib's -of the pension office searched to make g(x>d his charges. [ Every soldier organization m the land should feel itself in honor bound to denounce this business. Doubtless some, vetoes are just. Yet a great government, considering the services rendered and the hitter cost to those disabled by them, might afford to solve all doubts in favor of veterans or those who depended ujxm them for support. But veterans have a right to demand that in tliese cases above all others with wftich an executive has to deal, there shall lie common decency and dignity of hmguage and treatment. What is there In Grover Cleveland’s former life tliat fits him to sit in judgment on the true measure of patriotism? Whiit.is there that justifies him in holding itp to the view of the country a record of a soldiers' moral habits? Above all, what is tltere that excuses him for questioning the chastity of soldiers’ widows? Is* he responding to the call. “He that is without sin among you let him cast tine first stone?" While shine of liis utterances on the subject of unworthy pensions are sound and worthy of attention, liis dealings with private pension bills have been, in the main, in the direction of sending to the tioorIwuse or keeping In it broken-down veterans who. in their .prime, were more patriotic than the president who now sirs in cruel juclgment upon them. There was more excuse for the rebel treatment of Union prisoners than there is for Jjrover.Cleveland's cruelty toward disable veterans or their starving families. --Cincinnati Commercial Gazette.