Life — June 30, 1898 — page 4: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

White NNN 19 West THnery- Fi VoL. JUNE 99, 1898, No, $12. St. New Yous. y Th ‘0 foreign, eextr sibutions wi $5.00 @ year in ad- ntries a the Pustal coples, 10 cents p destroyed unless accompanied by @& stamped and The illustrations in Live are copyrighted, and are not Lirithout special ment with the publishers, be repi UR old friend, William Bryan, is having fun again, He isa Colo- nel now, as we all know, and when he made his speech on Nebraska Day at the Omaba Fair he @ wore his Colonel's clothes. That was right. What is the use of buying store uniform clothes if you don't wear them when folks are looking? Mr. Bryan's clothes and his new title are warlike, but he is no more warlike than he can help. He wants to settle the Cuban question and then quit. He doesn’t want toavnex the Philippines, nor let a war undertaken for humanity into a war of conque No more do we. We want to finish up the war as soon as we can, and do no more mischief, mea while, than is indispensable to persuade Spain to let go. But there is not much use of talking about what we shall do with the Philippines ond the rest of Spain's outlying properties until we know what the situation will be when Spai does get ready to let go. We should be more interested in what Mr. Bryan might have to say about our policy in the Pacitic after he had crossed “the Pacific and got back, than we are at present. Keep your Colocel’s suit on, William, but use it for colonelin: for oratory. We know your present views, and a great many of us sympa thize with them. We understand now that you are not to be sent to Manila We hope this isn’t true, for it would be interesting to know what effect the actual degenerate -LIFE- sight of the Philippines and actual expe- rience of conditions there would have upon a statesman of your convictions, er.you had helped to take and hold pines, you came back and told t to give them back to Spain, we would give you an attentive hearin Even in Cuba, under Lee, you ought to be ve a lawful excuse to get out of the country and be relieved of all obligation to talk about the war, for just now talking about the war isa blind busi- ness, and highly unsatisfactory. Noth- ing yoes now but fighting and hard thinking. The time to talk may come presently, and here’s hoping you will be where you can do your share, for other- wise it is likely to go hard with you, > —_—_/_ ea OME of our neighbors are busy with J rumors about serious differences of opinion between the Secretary of War and the two leading Generals of the army. It is not going to do the country avy good to gossip about rumors of this sort. If Secretary Alger isn’t up to his job, it is the President’s affair, He made him Sec retary of War, and c: him any time he likes. This is not a time when inefficiency in the War Department can hope to go unnoticed. We do not know that it s. If it does exist we cannot help it, but it will be pretty sure to work its own cure, and that rather promptly. a nunma than there was. “[BERE is more ne With two invasions under way, and two more promised, it is an off day when we don’t get a spatter of ne from somewhere. pretty small news, but it makes reading. Most of it, as yet, is Recent accounts, both from Manila and Santiago, are adapted to give us a better opinion of the fighting qualities of the insurgents, There is a prospect that at Manila they will have done nearly all the fighting necessary before our first troops get there, while at Guantanamo, though as yet they are few in number, they have shown themselves courageous, and truly helpful, Whatever makes us think better of the native populations of the Spanish islands is helpful to our spirits, since it makes it easier for us to believe that, after all, the game may be worth the candle. T is not nice of the Spaniards to refuse to exchange Hobson, neither is it wise. We want Hobson and his assist- ant heroes back, and if anything can 1 to the next attack on San- x0, it will be the prospect of recap- turing our own men, Another thing that has bappened that is not nice, is the mutilation of dead Americans at Guantanamo. That must be the work of the Spanish gucrillas, whom all accounts represent to be a wretched lot of brutal cutthroats, whose trade is butchery, and who like best to practice it on non-combat: fe mS M R. JOSEPH LEITER has not I yet published any report of the final result of his endeavors in the wheat market. Perhaps it is too soon yet for him to be sure where he stands, What- ever his report is, it must be conceded that, on the whole, his venture has been bly successful. Te meddled with wheat, not he needed more money, but to gain experience and emo tions, He has had his emotions, and they must have exceeded in variety and intensity his most sanguine expectations, His respected father also has had some, Mr. Joseph Leiter is still a young man, acd has shown himself to be a remark- able young man. Whether he won or lost in the game he played was of no visible consequence to the world, and not of critical moment even to himself. If we criticise him, it must be, not for slipping up, but for trying todo a thing that was not worth doing. A rightly constituted. educated man, ought not in his youth to find life so barren as to feel impelled to bend his energies to create so unnecessary and bootless a thing as a corner in wheat. We wish Mr. Leiter better luck in his next choice of a purpose, Yet he might have done far worse than he has. He might have started a one- cent newspaper, and cheapened the pop- ular taste in an attempt to be cheap enough to hit it. because