Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 19, Number 96, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 August 1898 — Roosevelt All Right. [ARTICLE]

Roosevelt All Right.

Teddy Roosevelt wrote to Secretary Alger that 4,000 of his rough riders would easily be worth 10,050 national guardsmen, armed with black powder Springfields, or other archaic weapons. This made Secretary Alger very wroth and he wrote a very sharp rebuke to Teddy. Then John R. Tanner, the not altogether admired governor of Illinois, jumped in and hit Roosevelt another whack. But rpally we believe that Roosevelt was about right. He did not say that the rough riders were inherently better men than the volunteers, but conveyed the idea that, armed as they are with modern and efficient weapons, using the smokeless powder, which experience in bush fighting around Santiago has shown to have such enormous advantages over the ordinary black powder, the rough riders would be vastly more efficient than other troops firmed with the out-of-date Springfields, shooting the smoky powder which revealed every man’s hiding place to the enemy every time he fired his gun. In our judgement it is not Roosevelt who needs rebuke, but Secretary Alger himself, and previous heads of tlje war department and whoever else is responsible for the want of efficient weapons and smokeless powder for our soldiers.