i9oo3 General Funs ton 



future, as one suggestive incident will attest. In 

 the spring of 1900, Colonel Frederick Funston 

 returned from the Philippines with a well-earned 

 reputation for courage and good sense, somewhat 

 overdone perhaps (as he himself asserted) by an 

 exaggerated enthusiasm on the part of the war 

 correspondents. Being an intimate friend and old 

 college chum of Professor Kellogg at the University 

 of Kansas, he came down to Stanford for a brief 

 visit. His intention, he then said, was to resign 

 from the army, and he hoped for but one thing — 

 that he might be chosen to lead the Kansas delegation 

 in the approaching Republican nominating con- 

 vention, with the view to "stampeding it for Roose- 

 velt." He doubtless spoke to others of this plan; Funston $ 

 in any case, before he could leave for Washington, p^°^°^^°^ 

 and much to his surprise, he received promotion to 

 the rank of brigadier general with orders to return 

 immediately to the Philippines. His subsequent 

 career was highly creditable, his administration of 

 the city of San Francisco during the earthquake- 

 fire of 1906 was most admirable, and his untimely 

 death in 1914 deprived the United States Army of 

 one of its sanest officers. But his promotion in 

 1900 illustrates how history is sometimes forestalled. 



My opposition to the spoils system — ■ and my The Mug- 

 interest in clean government generally — led me to '^"'"^^ 

 support Cleveland against Blaine and to ally myself 

 with the group of insurgent Republicans known as 

 "Mugwumps." Like the majority of university men 

 of Republican antecedents, I had felt a steadily 

 increasing distrust of Republican leaders — partly 

 because most of them were obviously controlled by 

 certain financial interests, partly because they main- 



1317:} 



