Page:Roosevelt in the Kansas City Star.djvu/352

290 an outrage. All civil officials are paid. The Secretary of War is paid, and he ought not to touch a dollar of his salary and no high official should touch a dollar of his salary until the enlisted men and junior officers are paid every cent that is owing to them, and this payment should be prompt. There is literally no excuse for even so much as three daysdelay in the payment.

Moreover, these men, at great cost to themselves in paying everything including, in fifty or sixty thousand cases, their lives, have gone to the front at a wage from one half to one fifth as great as that their companions who stayed behind have received during the same period. They enlisted to do a specific job. They made the sacrifice in order to do that job. We on our side should see that just as soon as the job is done the men are taken home, allowed to leave the army, and begin earning their livelihood and take care of the wives and children that the married ones among them have left behind.

Recently in the public press there have appeared various artless and chatty statements from the State, War, and Navy departments that our men might be kept in Europe to do general police work and might not be brought back here until the summer of 1920. There are three types of soldiers on the other side. There are the Regular Army men, who have entered the Regular Army as a profession, and to whom it is a matter of indifference whether they stay in Europe, come back here, go to the Philippines, or do anything else. That is a small