Life — April 18, 1901 — page 4: what you’re looking at

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

“© While there is Life there's Hope.” VOL. XXXVI. APRIL 18, 1901. No. £63, 19 West Taiery-Finst St., New YORE. Poabiished every Thursday. $500 a year in ad: anes. Irastage to foreign countriesin the Fostal ition, $Lt'a year exten. ‘Single current. copter, Idesats. Mack numbers, after three months from nto of pubileation, 3 cents. No contribution will be returned unless accompanied by stamped and addressed envelope. The illustrations in Lire are copyrighted, and are not to be reproduced without speciat arrangement with the publishers, Prompt notification should be sent by sub- seribers of any change of address, Fonston’s qualifica- tions for a Brigadier- Generalship,” says a @ jaily paper, “there ought to be no reason- able doubt. "’ Perhaps there is less doubt about it than there is reason for, At any rate he is young enough still to learn whatever he doesn’t know. The trouble about the appointment, in so far as there is any trouble, is that there are so many deserving officers who are unquestion- ably qualified to bo brigadiers and who have learned their business by long de- votion to a service in which Funston is a new-comer. One hates to see any chance for promotion lost to older men who have earned it. Looking at the caso on that side Funston’s reward seems too big. But the President had ler one handy that was not too all, Funston’s exploit ind important. Perhaps the fact that it was an exploit that is by no means universally admired entitles it to so much the greater reward, At all events the Administration has left no one in doubt as to what it thinks of Funston and his enterprise. As to the morals and ethics of the means by which Funston did the feat which brought him his promotion, critics who dispar them are not having much success in making out Mark T still busy in the effort Ament that his place is ad has not as yet pub- their case. vain, evstox morun Americanoram, i: to persuade Dr in the pillory, a -LIFE- lished any opinion as to whether Funs- ton’s perfidies were warrantable or not. One would like to know how it strikes Brother Mark, but Brother Ament’s squirms leave him little leisure. Mean while, in the absence of authoritative opinion to the contrary, let us believe, what scems to be true, that General Funston’s wiles wero only such as gentlemen who do not value their necks are privileged to use in war. EGY ore Ag As fee 2 W AR isn’t an industry like college athletics, in which how you do it counts more than w! rou ac- complish. It is a serious game, like bridge whist, or railroading, or trust building.which folks play to win. The more one thinks of Funston and his capacities and resources the more thoughtfully one ruminates about the influences of contemporary civilization in Kansas. Funston's way all like the way of Mrs. Carri If she had wanted Aguinaldo she would have gone forth with hymns and hatchets and grabbed him noisily out of the bush. What she would have done by violence Funston did by craft. And he had the craft about him. No doubt we are justified in in- ferring that in a State like Kansas, where the women are obstreperous and. masterful, the great principle of the survivalof the fittest operates automat- ically for the development of a. ca- pacity for wiles and strategy in man. Men who haven't wit enough to be unexpected on occasion probably can't grow up in Kansas. If not absolutely suuffed out, at least they must be stunted, Aguinaldo was wily. What is more natural than that the American who has shown himself more wily still should have been a native of Kansas. After all, Mrs. Carrie Nation probably represents tho real forces that, by de- veloping wiles in Kansas.inen, led to Agninaldo's Perhaps, if ex- act justice were done, it is she that would be a brigadier. A FORTNIGHT ago there w: big pigeon shoot down on Long Island at which about twenty thousand oture. birds are said to have been shot. Pigeon shooting of this sort seems very fit to excite disgust. It isn't sportsmanlike. It "t necessary even to the sport that patronizes it, for clay pigeons are harder to hit than real birds. But what will be thought of a government, or a public conscience, that permits pigeon shooting on Long Island and prohibits cock-fighting in Havana and Manila? Cock-fighting is a thousand times the sportier sport. It costs vast- ly less in bird life. It is elevating and moral compared with pigeon shooting, and yet we tell the Cubans and the Filipinos that it is naughty in them to fight cocks and we can’t permit it, while, here, ten miles from New York, a squad of shooters kill what they can of twenty thousand tame pigeons! Wo ought to be ashamed. We ought not to have meddled with cock-fighting in Havana anyhow, for it is no affair of ours. But to presume to get the mote out of Tagal and Cuban eyes while such beams obscure our own vision is nauseating. PRING at this writing seems irrepressibly due, and will be welcome. So much has been going on in Wall Street the last. two months that we have hardly had time to long for soft airs and the sprouting of green things, but now we are ready and would like to loaf a little and invite our souls. Almost everything has been combined that is combinable, and surely there is leisure now for the sun and the rain to get together and put natural crops in the way of doing business. There has been so much sudden and arbitrary increase in val- nes ; so much putting of two and two together and calling the result six, or eight, or twenty, that it will be un- usually restful and refreshing this year to see Naturo at work in her old- fashioned way, bringing forward de- liberate crops after due sowing, as she did in our grandfathers’ time. Lire expects to stick to the old way too, The report that a syndicate has obtained a controlling interest in the stock of this paper, The Churchman, the Medical Record and the Financial Gazette and will combine them, is un- true and is hereby denied. comicbooks.com