out reference to any popular or professional discussion about the glory won or deserved by any person. A legal view of glory might not be interesting. For present purposes it is sufficient to cite the scriptural text, "One star differeth from another star in glory." Glory may or may not be sup ported by reason. It springs from uncon trollable emotions when given by a people. When it is denied by professional critics no volunteers are needed to play the parts of the Furies. This case has so many interest ing features that it may be seen more clearly when a selection is made.
CONFLICTING PRINCIPLES NECES SITATE POLITICAL POLICY. Legal principles, military customs, and political policy are necessary to explain its beginning, the court's method of examina tion, its findings of facts and of opinion, and its recommendation. Those same lights also are required to test the substance and form of the dissent by the eminent president of that distinguished court. No statesman can forget, and no citizen, whatever his party maybe, should ignore the fundamental political necessity that any ad ministration worthy of the name must have a policy not merely for its own standing, but also, and chiefly, because it should stand as it deems best for the good of the nation. The President of the United States as Com mander-in-Chief of all its forces, is rightly guided, not merely, by military law, and by legal considerations in such command, but also and principally by his comprehensive knowledge of the whole existing state of the nation and all its interests. Of this vast sys tem he alone is the centre, and he alone may be fully and correctly informed. At all events the awful responsibilities of its execu tive management rest upon him. The mem
bers of his cabinet, as heads of their depart ments, share to a formidable degree the burden of his appointments, his dismissals, his toleration, his control. In time of war, no fire of any enemy is hotter, on any field or any sea, than the partisan lightning aimed at the President. When a national force suffers a defeat, even so-called friends of the administration join in an explosion of national abuse. Then the unwritten lawlessness of human nature demands a scapegoat. The admin istration, if it would not be punished itself, must punish justly or unjustly. This germ of anarchy is a disease of every govern ment. Our own country, England, present and past, the continental nations, the East, and the peoples of remote antiquity, furnish j1o exception to the terrible rule. But after a national victory even the larger part of a nation endures tolerance with complacency, and even if public ser vants may have been faulty their chief some times finds it for the public welfare to let by gones be bygones. Provided that a country is substantially well governed, it adds to the healthy life of its people not to check their natural enthusiasm. Their feelings being unmeasured, they are happier when their occasional praise of their public servants bears some proportion to their more con stant blame. If the findings of the recent Court of In quiry are correct, and the late President McKinley knew and thought substantially what these three experienced judges have re ported as facts, it is not improbable that he, with the unusual adaptability which char acterized his mind and affected his policy, may have preferred not to inquire what might have been the results, or what were the military faults of any officer's acts or omissions before the victory in which such officer risked his life and won the applause
