Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 20, Number 40, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 January 1899 — WILL CENSURE ALL [ARTICLE]

WILL CENSURE ALL

ARMY CHIEFS BLAMED BY WAR INVESTIGATORS. CommiMion’a Report Take* ■ Bap at Everybody Concerned—Even Rebakts Congress for Palling to provide Smokeless Powder—Beef Charges. The New York Herald, in its Washington dispatches, outlines what it declares will be the findings of the commission to investigate the war. It will show that the primary trouble was due to lack at proper military organization and then proceed to distribute this blame upon Secretary Alger, Gens. Miles, Shatter, Brooke and Breckinridge, and upon Congress itself, the censure in the latter case being for its failure to make appropriations for smokeless powder. The Manila campaign alone, apparently, will escape criticism—a fact foreseen from the first. Secretary Alger will be censored, it In said, fop weakness, especially with Gen. Miles, while the commanding general will be blamed for several matters in his conduct “before, during and after the war, for his selection of-certain army camps, for telling Secretary Alger he was in the habit of making out his own orders, and for bringing unfounded Charges that bad beef was supplied to the troops in Porte Rico.” Gen. Shaftcr, it is said, will be censured on points he admitted in his testimony and Gen. Breckinridge for leaving his department to take part in the Santiago campaign, while Gen. Brooke will l>e blamed for conditions at Camp Thomas, for lack of inspections and failure to carry out sanitary regulations. The blame, in short, will be pretty evenly distributed along the line. Beef Charges Unfounded. Coming down to the beef controversy, the commission will find that Gep. Miles' charges were unfounded, that the thirteen officers whose reports Gen. Miles submitted as showing the beef supplied for the. Porto Rico-army was unfit for nse never served in Porto Rico, and that there wan absolutely no criminality in anjr of the contracts made for supplies for the service. So far as the Santiago campaign is concerned, the commission will report that Gen. Shatter conducted that movement as efficiently as could have been expected under the circumstances. No fault will be found with Gen. Shatter except as to the points which he in his testimony admitted. The report will also show that Congress was responsible for the equipment of the soldiers with black powder, as the ordnance department did not get in time the necessary appropriations for smokeless powder. It has been found by the commission that a war has never been operated with such a small loss of life. Only 1 per cent of the army died from illness and in battle. Faults which existed at Santiago also existed in Porto Rico, there being a great deal of illness at that plaee. The Manila campaign was thoroughly satisfactory. With respect to jJontauk Point, the commission will find that it was the best point that could have been selected tor bringing the troops home from Cuba; that it would have been better had the several thousand men and several thousand animals not been sent to that point from the South; but that there was no foundation for many of the complaints which were filed.