An Unfortunate Blunder

What, retire from the service by a cold, formal announcement from the pen of a department clerk that splendid soldier General Miles, who has literally fought his way to the highest rank, and almost simultaneously raise to the rank next to the highest, over the heads of a multitude of seasoned and experienced officers of intervening grades, General Leonard Wood, really a civilian, who has seen almost no fighting at all? No, no, Mr. President; no, Mr. Secretary, that will never do. It is a frightful blunder, of which no one would have thought the administration capable had it not been committed.

Either one of these acts by itself would have subjected the President and the Secretary of War to a storm of criticism. Together they constitute an act of blind misjudgment from the consequences of which the administration should with all speed shield itself by a saving measure of correction. What nation on earth ever dismissed the chief general officer of its army with such insulting curtness? Where in history has the record of a brave and brilliant soldier come to such a contemptuous closing? An impartial world will read with astonishment, and the American people with indignation, the story of the ignoble manner in which the administration has chosen to record the retirement of General Nelson A. Miles.

The President and the secretary have blundered, and their blunder may well assume the proportions of a veritable calamity for the administration. The shortest way out is the best. It is not loo late for the President to write such a letter as that which President Cleveland published upon the occasion of General Schofield's retirement. It is too late to retrieve the blunder altogether, but a most unfortunate incident will be sooner forgotten if a tardy but just appreciation of the distinguished services of General Miles comes promptly from the pen of the President. - New York Times