the administration is defeated at the polls, will England believe that we accept the results of the war?

Will Germany, that sleepless searcher for new markets for her factories and fields, and therefore the effective meddler in all international complications-will Germany be discouraged from interfering with our settlement of the war, if the administration is defeated at the polls?

Will Russia, that weaver of the webs of commerce into which province after province and people after people falls, regard us as a steadfast people if the administration is defeated at the polls?

The world is observing us to-day. Not a Foreign Office in Europe that is not studying the American republic and watching the American elections of 1898 as it never watched an American election before. Are the American people the chameleon of the nations? "If so, we can easily handle them," say the diplomats of the world.

Which result, say you, will have the best effect for us upon the great Powers who watch us with the jealousy strength always inspires-a defeat, at the hand of the American people, of the administration which has conducted our foreign war to a world-embracing success, and which has in hand the most important foreign problems since the Revolution; or, such an endorsement of the administration by the American people as will swell to a national acclaim?

No matter what your views on the Dingley or the Wilson laws; no matter whether you favor Mexican money or the standard of this republic, we must deal from this day on with nations greedy of every market we are to invade; nations with statesmen trained in craft, nations with ships and guns and money and men. Will they sift out the motive for your vote, or will they consider the large result of the endorse

ment or rebuke of the administration? The world still rubs its eyes from its awakening to the resistless power and sure destiny of this republic. Which outcome of this election will be best for America's future-which will most healthfully impress every people of the globe with the steadfastness of character and tenacity of purpose of the American people-the triumph of the government at the polls, or the success of the Opposition?

I repeat, it is more than a party question. It is an American question. It is an issue in which history sleeps. It is a situation which will influence the destiny of the republic.

And yet have we peace? Does not the cloud of war linger on the horizon? If it does not-if only the tremendous problems of peace now under solution remain, ought not the administration be supported in its fateful work by the endorsement of the American people? Think of England abandoning its ministry at the moment it was securing the fruits of a successful war! Think of Germany rebuking Bismarck at the moment he was dictating peace to France! What would America say of them if they should do such a deed of mingled insanity, perfidy, and folly? What would the world say of America, if, in the very midst of peace negotiations upon which the nations are looking with jealousy, fear, and hatred, the American people should rebuke the adminis tration in charge of those peace negotiations and place a hostile House and Senate in Washington? God forbid! When a people show such inconstancy, such childish fickleness as that, their career as a power among nations is a memory.

But, if possible war lurks in the future, what then? Shall we forsake our leaders at the close of a campaign of glory and on the eve of new campaigns for which it has prepared?

Yet, that is what the success of the Opposition to the government means. What is that old saying about the idiocy of him who changed horses while crossing a stream? It would be like discharging a workman because he was efficient and true. It would be like court-martialing Grant and discharging his heroes in dishonor because they took Vicksburg.

Ah! the heroes of Vicksburg and Peach Tree Creek, Atlanta, Mission Ridge, the Wilderness, and all those fields of glory, of suffering, and of death!

Soldiers of 1861! A generation has passed and you have reared a race of heroes worthy of your blood-heroes of El Caney, San Juan, and Cavité, of Santiago and Manila―ay! and 200,000 more as brave as they, who waited in camp with the agony of impatience the call of battle, ready to count the hellish hardship of the trenches the very sweets of fate, if they could only fight for the flag.

For every tented field was full of Hobsons, of Roosevelts, of Wheelers, and their men; full of the kind of soldiers that in regiments of rags, starving, with bare feet in the snows of winter, made Valley Forge immortal; full of the same kind of boys that endured the hideous hardships of the Civil War, drank from filthy roadside pools as they marched through swamps of death, ate food alive with weevils, and even corn picked from the horses' camp, slept in the blankets of the blast with sheets of sleet for covering, breakfasted with danger and dined with death, and came back-those who did come back—with a laugh and a shout and a song of joy, true American soldiers, pride of their country, and envy of the world.

For that is the kind of boys the soldiers of 1898 are, notwithstanding the slanders of politicians and the infamy of a leprous press that try to make the world believe our soldiers

are suckling babes and womanish weaklings, and our government, in war, a corrupt machine, fattening off the suffering of our armies. In the name of the sturdy soldiery of America I denounce the hissing lies of politicians out of an issue, who are trying to disgrace American manhood in the eyes of the nations.

In the name of patriotism, I arraign these maligners of the soldierhood of our nation before the bar of the present and the past. I call to the witness stand that Bayard of our armies, General Joe Wheeler. I call that Hotspur of the South, Fitzhugh Lee. I call the 200,000 men, themselves, who went to war for the business of war.

And I put all these against the vandals of politics who are blackening their fame as soldiers and as men. I call history to the witness stand. In the Mexican war the loss from every cause was twenty-five per cent, and this is on incomplete returns; in the present war the loss from every cause is only three per cent. In the Mexican war the sick lay naked on the ground with only blankets over them and were buried with only a blanket around them. Of the volunteer force 5,423 were discharged for disability, and 3,229 died from disease. When Scott marched to Mexico, only 96 men were left out of one regiment of 1,000. The average of a Mississippi company was reduced from 90 to 30 men. From Vera Cruz to Mexico a line of sick and dying marked his line of march.

General Taylor publicly declared that, in his army, five men died from sickness for every man killed in battle. Scott demanded surgeons. The government refused to give them. The three-months men lost nearly nine per cent; the sixmonths men lost fourteen per cent; the twelve-months men twenty-nine per cent; the men enlisted for the war lost

thirty-seven per cent; 31,914 soldiers enlisted for the war, and 11,914 of these were lost, of whom 7,369 are unaccounted for.

In the war for the Union-no, there is no need of figures there. Go to the field of Gettysburg and ask. Go ask that old veteran how fever's fetid breath breathed on them and disease rotted their blood. And in the present war, thank God, the loss and suffering is less than in any war in all the history of the world!

And if any needless suffering there has been, if any deaths from criminal neglect, if any hard condition not a usual incident of sudden war by a peaceful people has been permitted, William McKinley will see that the responsible ones are punished. Although our loss was less than the world ever knew before; although the condition of our troops was better than in any conflict of our history, McKinley the Just, has appointed, from both parties, a commission of the most eminent men in the nation to lay the facts before him.

Let the investigation go on, and when the report is made the people of America will know how black as midnight is the sin of those who, for the purpose of politics, have shamed the hardihood of the American soldiers before the world, attempted to demoralize our army in the face of the enemy, and libeled the government at Washington to delighted and envious nations.

And think of what was done! Two hundred and fifty thousand men suddenly called to arms; men unused to the life of camps; men fresh from the soft comforts of the best homes of the richest people on earth. Those men, equipped, instant call to battle;

transported to camps convenient for

waiting there the command which any moment might have brought; supplies purchased in every quarter of the land and