OUR BOYS IN BLUE PROVE HEROISM.
=United States Troops at the Presidio and Fort Mason
Under Command of General Funston Bring Order Out of
Chaos and Save City from Pestilence--San Francisco
Said "Thank God for the Boys in Blue"--Stricken City
Patrolled by Soldiers.=
"Thank god for the Boys in Blue!" was the ardent and praiseful
exclamation of the people of San Francisco during and after the
terrible days that rent by shock and consumed by fire their beautiful
city. And as their courage and devotion to save and protect, and their
tenderness towards the dying and the dead became known the entire
country re-echoed the tribute. For it was the soldiers of Uncle Sam,
untiring and unafraid amidst horrors and dangers seen and unseen, that
stood between half-crazed refugees from the quake and the fire and
downright starvation and anarchy.
When the catastrophe occurred Major General A. W. Greely, in command
of the military department of the Pacific, was on his way east to
attend the marriage of his daughter, and so the command of the troops
and of the department devolved on Brigadier General Frederick Funston;
and as on previous occasions when pluck and wise decision were
required he showed himself equal to the emergency. The first thing
that was done was to divide that portion of the city where order and
protection were most needed into six districts, four of them being
guarded by the military, one by the marine and one by the navy. Other
portions of the city were patrolled by the National Guard and by the
city's police force. Because of these arrangements there was
thereafter but little trouble, and practically no more looting.
During the fire General Funston established his headquarters at Fort
Mason on the cliffs of Black Point, and at once it became the busiest
and most picturesque spot in San Francisco. There was an awe-inspiring
dignity about the place, with its many guards, military ensemble and
the businesslike movements of officers and men. Few were allowed to
enter within its gates, and the missions of those who did find their
way within were disposed of with that accuracy and dispatch peculiar
to government headquarters. Scores of automobiles rushed in and out of
the gate, and each car contained an armed guardsman in the front seat
furiously blowing a sentry whistle to clear the roadway. At the sound
of that tremolo the crowds scattered as if by magic. San Francisco was
virtually under martial law, and order was wrought from chaos.
After the quake the President and Secretary Taft were chiefly
concerned at first with getting supplies, and that work was performed
with extraordinary expedition and thoroughness. At the same time they
were rushing troops, marines, and sailors to guard the devastated
city.
The marvelous work done by the soldiers, from General Funston down to
the newest recruit, won the admiration and congratulations of the
entire country. The sentiment everywhere was and is that the army has
demonstrated its splendid capacity not only to preserve peace in the
face of armed resistance, but to take charge of affairs in a stricken
city at a time when intelligent discipline was more needed than
everything else.
Secretary Taft expressed the belief that congress would have to give
him absolution for the violence he had done the constitution in those
terrible days. He ordered General Funston to take complete command of
the city, to put martial law into effect, and to enforce sanitary
regulations without regard to the wishes of the people.
The war department had been morally responsible for the unhesitating
way in which the troops shot down looters and the people who refused
to understand that great situations must be controlled without regard
to law.
It was the soldiers apparently who brought order out of chaos. They
headed the unfortunate refugees farther and farther on ahead of the
flames, until finally they had located the vast homeless mob in the
Presidio, in the Golden Gate Park, and in other wide expanses. General
Funston had not exceeded his orders. He was given full discretion to
employ his forces as he saw fit. He turned loose the soldiers under
him with general instructions to act as their own good sense dictated,
and it is to the eternal credit of the noncommissioned officers and
the privates that every report sent to the war department and all the
descriptions in the press reports indicated that the army had saved
the situation in San Francisco.
When a sturdy sergeant brought down the butt of his musket on the
counter of a bake shop where they were beginning to sell bread at 75
cents a loaf, and announced that bread thereafter in that concern
would be sold at 10 cents a loaf or there would be one less baker in
the world, he was guilty of an act which in any other time might have
landed him in prison.
If he is punished for it now, it will only be after the Secretary of
War and the President are impeached, because he was only obeying the
spirit if not the letter of their instructions to General Funston.
Soldiers guarded the water wagons, which were driven about the
streets, and this show of force was necessary, so that the scanty
supplies might be distributed with even-handed justice. In the same
way, when General Funston issued orders as the result of which the
soldiers compelled citizens to dig graves for the temporary interment
of the dead, he violated the law most flagrantly, but he acted as the
emergency demanded, and the incident contributed with other things to
make the army organization of the United States a little bit the most
popular thing in the country in these days.
When the army was reduced at the close of the Philippine
insurrection, the machinery was left intact. In this way, although the
quartermasters' stores in San Francisco were wiped out of existence,
it was possible to hurry supplies to San Francisco. They began
arriving there promptly and the danger of famine was averted.
It is the purpose of the war department to continue practical martial
law in San Francisco.
It is believed the greatest work of the soldiers, in which term of
course are to be included the marines and sailors as well, was in the
prevention of pestilence. Practically all of the house to house sewage
system of San Francisco had been destroyed. An army of two or three
hundred thousand men encamped in the suburbs of a great city would
ordinarily die like flies unless it provided itself with proper
facilities for the removal of garbage and the general sanitary
cleansing of the immense camp. Even with trained soldiers under strict
discipline it was an extremely difficult thing to enforce sanitary
regulations.
Immense supplies of medical necessities already had been forwarded
from the bureau at St. Louis, and General Funston organized at once a
series of camps on military lines. The refugees were compelled to live
up to sanitary rules whether they liked it or not. Those who refused
felt the pick of a bayonet.
Furthermore, out of the tens of thousands of homeless people the
soldiers forced as many as were needed to go to work for the common
good, putting up shelters, erecting tents, devising store-houses, and,
above all, creating the necessary sanitary appliances and safeguards
to prevent the outbreak of pestilence.
It required the utmost vigilance on the part of the army officers and
the most constant attention by the medical corps to prevent an
outbreak of typhoid, dysentery, and the ordinary train of nearly fatal
diseases which are common to large military camps, and which are
almost inevitable when dealing with an unorganized and unintelligent
mob.
Efforts were made to compel every man, woman, and child to obey
constantly the strict sanitary regulations which the army provides for
its own protection.
Every medical officer and every man in the hospital corps within a
wide range of San Francisco had been ordered to report at once for
duty under General Funston. With the flames practically under control
and with millions of army rations on the grounds or actually in sight
of the people, the efforts of the War Department became directed to
the preservation of health and in a secondary degree to the location
and registration of the dead, the wounded, and the saved.
Following close upon the heels of the rations and the tents there came
tons upon tons of disinfectants unloaded at Oakland and every possible
device was being employed by the medical bureau to make as good a
record in this regard as the quartermaster and commissary departments
had already produced in supplying food and shelter.
Meanwhile the ever-ready American private soldier and his splendid
executive officer, the American noncom., were really the rulers at San
Francisco. They defied the law every minute, but evidently they acted
with characteristic good sense. The price of bread was kept down, the
mob was being systematized and taught to respect authority, and enough
thieves had summarily been shot in San Francisco to render looting a
dangerous and an unprofitable avocation.
People who went through the great fire at Chicago in 1871 remember
that when Gen. Sheridan brought in regular soldiers he established
order within a brief period of time, and there was a feeling of relief
when men under his command began to blow up houses in the vicinity of
Wabash avenue and Congress street.
The laws of the United States had been violated every minute. Supplies
were purchased in the open market, government property had been handed
out without receipts to anybody who seemed to have authority to
receive it, and the distribution of supplies had been wholly free
from the slightest suspicion of red tape.
In spite of these facts, the President and Secretary Taft felt proud
of the fact that the army organization had proved itself able to
withstand the sudden strain put upon it, while the enlisted man showed
his ability to act at a distance from his commissioned officer with an
intelligence and an initiative which would be impossible in the
European armies.
As during the days of disaster and terror stricken San Francisco was
absolutely under the control of General Funston, a few facts about his
career will be appropriate here. Red-headed, red-blooded; a pygmy in
stature, a giant in experience; true son of Romany in peace and of
Erin in war--the capture of Aguinaldo in the wilds of North Luzon and
his control of affairs in San Francisco fairly top off the adventurous
career of Frederick Funston, fighter.
General Funston was born in Ohio, but when he was two years old his
family moved to Kansas. After passing through the high school he
entered the University of Kansas. His father had been a congressman
for a number of years. His ambition was to enter West Point, but he
failed to pass its examination. He later broke into the newspaper
business, but his career in that field was short. In 1900 his father
secured him an appointment as botanist in the Department of
Agriculture. After a trip to Montana and the Dakotas he was attached
to the party which made the first Government survey of Death Valley,
the famous California death-trap. Seven months were spent in this
work, and Funston is the only man of the party alive and sane today.
In 1891-92 the Government sent him to make a botanical survey of
certain parts of the Alaskan coast, and in 1893 he returned to the
Arctic and made a similar survey of the Yukon. He negotiated Chilkoot
Pass, then an untrodden pathway. After trying to start a coffee
plantation in Central America and to fill a job with the Santa Fe
railroad, the torch of the Cuban revolution became a beacon to his
adventurous spirit. He joined a filibustering party which the
Dauntless landed at Camaguay in August, 1896. He was assigned by
Garcia to the artillery arm of the insurgent service.
Twenty-three battles in Cuba was his record with his guns. Once he was
captured and sentenced to death, but escaped. Later still a
steel-tipped Mauser bullet pierced his lungs. This healed, but the
fever struck him down, and compelled his return to the United States.
As he was preparing to return to Cuba the Maine was blown up and in
his certainty that war with Spain would result he awaited the issue.
Governor Leedy, of Kansas, telegraphed for him, and he became Colonel
of the Twentieth Kansas. He went with General Miles to Cuba in June,
1898, and sailed with his regiment for Manila in October. Three weeks
before he sailed Colonel Funston met Miss Ella Blankhart of Oakland.
As impetuous in love as in war he wooed and won her, the marriage
taking place the day before the transport sailed.
Of his daring risks and feats in the Philippines and of his capture of
Aguinaldo the general public is so familiar as not to need
recapitulation here. Of his qualities as a fighting man pure and
simple, there can be no two opinions. Says General Harrison G. Otis:
"Funston is the greatest daredevil in the army, and would rather fight
than eat. I never saw a man who enjoyed fighting so much." Another
friend of his once said that Funston was a sixteenth-century hero,
born four hundred years or so too late, who had ever since been
seeking to remedy the chronological error of his birth.