Colonel Roosevelt's diary, first made public on September 28, 1921, throws interesting light on Republican claims of efficient management by Republicans of the Spanish-American War. Under date of May 7, 1898, the Colonel, then a lieutenant-colonel, recorded in his diary: "The delays and stupidity of the Ordnance Department surpass belief. The Quartermaster's Department is better, but bad. The Commissary Department is good. There is no management whatever in the War Department. Against a good nation we should be helpless," and these animadversions are reiterated in subsequent entries. Interesting comments from the greatest of contemporary Republicans on the divine right of the Republican party to conduct all American wars and transact all other American business of importance. But doubtless the Colonel had forgotten all this in 1917, and many other good Americans had also forgotten what was notorious in 1898 and the ineptitude of the Republican War Department, which, as Lieutenant-Colonel Roosevelt said under date of May 21, 1898, had "no head, no energy, no intelligence." But the old myth sedulously cultivated by Republicans continued in 1917, that only Republicans are fit to govern, no matter how badly they govern. Direful prophecies and predictions of disaster to the country by reason of the Democratic auspices under which the war was to be conducted were freely made. It is an unpleasant fact that some of the leading Republicans in the Senate and the House harboured for the President a partisan and personal hatred which made the wish father to the thought. Yet the expected did not happen, to the amazement and chagrin of the Republican enemies of the President. No other war was attended with so little scandal and with greater expedition. The cause was plain. It was the magnificent and aggressive leadership of Woodrow Wilson exerting itself all along the line, and that leadership was based upon certain fundamental resolutions which had been taking form in the President's mind for many months previous to his appearance before Congress asking for the passage of a war declaration. They were as follows: (1) There was to be no "politics" in the conduct of the war; (2) no political generals would be selected; (3) every ounce of energy and force in the nation was to be put back of the heads of the Army and the Navy in a supreme effort to make our influence, moral and physical, quickly felt. Every effort was made to cut out scandal and to put an absolute embargo on the activities of army speculators, contractors, and profiteers.