The war department is arranging to ...

The war department is arranging to provide Gen. Otis with 65,000 men.
Just why Gen. Otis should be left in command and that number of men given him, when he has insisted all along that he had men enough is not clear. If that many men are needed to bring the Philippine insurraction to an end, and most people believe they are needed, then there should be another general to command them.

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The assasins bullet removed Labori from the Drefyus trial for one week but it is thought be will be able to resume his place again today. That his absence from the trial has been a great loss to Dreyfus is probably true but, if reports can be relied upon, it is not Dreyfus who is now on trial but the military caste in France and hence his absence may not have been so great a loss as would otherwise have been the case. Under these circumsances an acquittal is scarcely to be expecteed no matter how weak the evidence against the accused.

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The talk about making Teddy Roosevelt a vice presidential candidate on the republican ticket is all idle noise Teddy would rather be first where he is than second at Rome. He is a man with a wrong kind of mentality to play second fiddle to McKinley No Teddy, when he goes on the ticket will stand at the head of it. He's no more Friday like Hobart. Hanna of course would be glad to get him on the ticket to boost McKinley but Teddy knows he is pretty certain to head the ticket in 1904 if not in 1900, so he will pull no chestnuts out of the fire for William McKinley.

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There is said to be a reapproachment between the Netherlands and Belgium on one side and Germany on the other. It is said the Duchmen are afraid Uncle Sam has his weather eye on their colonies in Asia and the West Indies ;and that he is preparing to swipe them and that they must therefore have some powerful friend behind whom they may shake their fists and make faces at the good Jonathan. But in their fear of trouble to come they are going a much longer distance from home than is necessary, for Germany undoubtedly has infinitely more desire at gobbling the Dutchmen than Uncle Sam has of siezing their colonies.

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The throw down of the Kaiser in the lower house of the Prussian Diet on his pet military canal bill last Saturday appears to have been a surprise to everybody. Apparently the cabinet is badly divided on the measure, as the ministers did practically nothing to stem the tide of opposition to the measure. It is said the Kaiser is to far committed to the measure that he thinks yielding on the issue would be equivalent to an abdication. He therefore proposes to push it through even if he has to dissolve the Diet and reconstruct his cabinet in order to accomplish his purpose. He may succeed, but nevertheless Germany is making strides away from the idea of personal government represented by the Kaiser and doing more and more to follow the demands of the people in legislative matters.

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The Criterion of last week in a caustic analysis of Pingree, Michigan's great reform governor, among other things, uses the following language in which the make up of hizzexcellency stand out in bold rerlief :
"Pingree's mind is chaos; his program is a mess of particulars; his methods are hypnotic. He has no theories, lays down no principles, and promotes no ideas He attains his purpose by the more direct and psychological methods of organic excitements. Pingree's progress fulfllls.in its general outlines, the metorological description of a storm. There is a vast movement, the center of which is curses and confusion. Only those who look at the phenomenon from a distance can discerne direction or determine the progress that he is making.
"No man has a greater contempt for ideas than the governor of Michigan. .Even so, he recognizes in them a certainvalue. Pingree uses an idea as he would a club; it is something with which to smite an enemy.
"Pingree's official documents are a hotch - potch, or at best a mosaic of other men's ideas. The governor of Michigan scorns the labor of putting things into written words. When he has a speech to make, or a message to write, he hires men, whose business it is to write and think, to do that work for him. Possibly as many as Half a dozen hands were employed upon his last message to the legislature.

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" Yesterday at the Hillsdale meeting of Southern Michigan farmers, Insurance Commissioner Campbell poured hot shot into ex-Gov. Rich and others who have recently advanced to the position that trusts are a good thing for the people. He declared that men who claim the trusts are a blessing and must be permitted to go on, have not studied their present methods or else are reaping advantage by defending them, either political or financial.
Said Mr. Campbell:
"There is no more rabid protectionist in Michigan than I am, but if I were a congressman and the trust could not be killed in any other way, I would vote to reduce the tariff to the lowest possible revenue point on every article produced by a combination octopus and for which unreasonable prices were demanded, until such trust is dead. When the industries we have protected turn upon us to commit robberies to pay dividends upon watered stocks, it is time for heroic treatment even though it is but temporary. "
The claim that trusts as at present managed are a blessing is the height of imprudence and shows that they now consider themselves strong enough to boldly defend their robberies.

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The Transvaal difficulty appears to have passed into an entirely new stage. In the first stage the Uitlanders aroused sympathy for themselves by proclaiming that they were denied political rights and were otherwise oppressed. There was considerable truth in the claim and the Boer government under strong pressure made provision of the admission of these people to citizenship. Now, the English government has shifted its position or entered upon another stage of the struggle which is simply that English influence must dominate in South African affairs. This is probably a much more dangerous phase of the trouble than the preceding There is a wide zone between a contest for political rights withheld and a struggle for supremacy of one race over another relative to future domination. But the Boers are between the devil and the deep sea. Whichever horn of the dilemma they choose they are pretty certain to lose in the end. But it is probable that England will not appeal to the sword, if any other means will accomplish her purpose. There are probably $2,000,000,000 of gold mining stock of South African mines held in England and France and have remained remarkably steady up to the present time, This is a pretty strong indication that war is not yet regarded as near at hand. But there is little doubt that the English purpose will be accomplished sooner or later.