Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 19, Number 14, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 October 1897 — PULSE of the PRESS [ARTICLE]

PULSE of the PRESS

Discipline at Fort Sheridan. And yet Weyler is called a brute.—-Ce-dar Rapids Gazette. Captain Lovering would make a star coach for a professional football team. — Omaha World-Herald. The military poet of.. Fort Sheridan seems to be in. urgent need of a civic federation. —Milwaukee Sentinel. Dragging a man by a rope tied to his heels does not seem to be the best method of enforcing' army discipline.—Dubuque Herald. The organization of a “Society for the Civilization of United States Army Officers” seems a need of the hour.—Des Moines Leader. The only remarkable thing in connection with the latest sensation at Fort Sheridan is that nobody was killed.— Washington Post. Even the brutal Weyler will have the right to point the finger of scorn at the American people and call them hypocrites if they permit such outrages.—Minneapolis Tribune. Perhaps that private soldier who was dragged by the heels at Fort Sheridan was merely being put in training for a military football team at that post.— Springfield, Ilf., Journal. We hope the story of the maltreatment of the private soldier in the regular army at Chicago has been exaggerated. If it is literally true, we have no reason to cry out against the brutality of German officers. —Buffalo Express. The cruelties practiced upon Private Hammond will heal, but from the “roastings” the brutish captain and his friend, the colonel, will get, there will be no recovery. And they deserve all they will get—Grand Rapids Herald. The rack and the thumbscrew should be made a part of the equipment of Fort Sheridan. Dragging a man by the heels and prodding him with a sword is too awkward a method of enforcing discipline and inculcating sentiments of loyalty.—Minneapolis Times. The officer who approves this outrage expresses himself as perfectly satisfied. The victim was insubordinate. He refused to perform some allotted labor, therefore he was treated with a savagery that would not be dreamed of for a day in Turkey.—Philadelphia Bulletin. There can be no state of affairs that justifies such cruelty. Other penalties can be provided for insubordinate soldiers. To persist in such practices is to reduce soldiers to the level of brutes and to make their officers bloodthirsty tyrants of the Weyler type.—Buffalo Courier-Rec-ord. Col. Hall is quoted as saying that there is nothing improper or inhuman in punishing contumacious privates by dragging them by the heels for 600 yards or so. The colonel has not volunteered to demonstrate the harmlessness of the practice in his own person, however.—San Francisco Bulletin. The report of that outrage to Private Hammond at Fort Sheridan reads as if it might have happened in military Germany or barbarous Turkey. But that an American citizen should be subjected to such humiliation and that an American officer could stoop so low as to enforce such edicts, passes all understanding.— Peoria Journal. The old idea that a commander must be a terror to inspire obedience and secure good discipline has largely disappeared, and it is demonstrated at every post in the country to-day that the more considerate and self-controlled method of handling the regulars counts immeasurably for the good of the service.—Detroit Free Press. Gen. Miles found the soldiers of the European armies well drilled machines, but he did not find among them the brightness and alertness to “catch on” that characterizes the American soldier. And yet some of Gen. Miles’ officers act as if they regarded the American private soldir as no better than a beast. —Minneapolis Tribune. This and That. A few grasshoppers are flying around in southwest Kansas, just to warn the farmers not to get too gay.—Kansas City Star. Before Spain scoffs at our fighting resources will she kindly consider the football teams which are now being mobilized ?—Chicago Record. Sugar Trust stock bobs up and down in its own sweet way. The chances are that the insiders continue to get most of the sweetness. —Boston Globe. It speaks vWll for the American farmer that the only kind of f.un ne with which this country is familiar is a freight car famine.—St. Louis Globe-Democrat. Klondike fiddlers receive as much as SSO per night at dances, but this is nothing compared with what Wall street gamblers earn for see-sawing stocks.—Buffalo Times. Another American warship has been sent to Hawaii and there is much speculation as to whether it will sink in the harbor or climb up on the island.—Chicago News. The President has long been known as a courageous man, but in appointing a postmaster in his own town he has increased his reputation for courage.—Chicago Inter Ocean. Weyler has cabled a request for one hundred and thirteen more administrative officials in Cuba. He would have been wiser to have cabled for one new head.— Chicago Inter Ocean. Two would-be murderers lost their lives at the hands of their intended victim, in Arkansas County, six miles south of De Witt, Ark. John Gray and John Burton are dead and Robert White is in the hands of Sheriff Smith of Arkansas County, charged with the killing. Roele Pelletier, the pretty French-Ca-nadian bride of Eli Sirois of Lambert Lake, Me., who, on hey wedding night in August two years ago, was abducted by Peter Bubeer, a jealous rival for her hand', and spirited away into the forests, has at last been found. W. O. Downs of Cleveland, Ohio, committed suicide by shooting himself in the head in New York. He was an old friend of President Grant, a schoolmate of Senator J. K. Jooes and an associate of Geo. M. Pullman. He was a radical free silver man and stumped for Bryan.