To the Editor of the Evening Post:

As one who has had some experience in the necessities, usages, and cruelties of war, which always prevail during a campaign in an enemy's country, I am surprised at the position of your journal, and its bitterness against the alleged action of Major Glenn, Lieutenant Conger, and Assistant Surgeon Lyon.

The testimony of Sergeant Riley, upon which you base your attack on these officers, goes to prove that they gave the water cure to a Filipino who had been made presidente in one of the provinces by our Government, who had taken the oath of allegiance to our country, and then used his official position to cover his acts as captain of an insurgent company which was acting in arms against our Army and within our lines. Therefore, he was a traitor and a spy, and his every act was a violation of the laws of war, and branded him an outlaw and guerilla. If these are the facts, under the usages of war these officers were justified in what they did; in fact, if they had shot the traitor they would never have been called to account, and in all probability this is what would have happened to him in the Civil War.

An officer has great latitude under such circumstances, and it is not safe or fair to condemn one for almost any act that detects a traitor and spy in arms against the Government which he has sworn to protect, and which has put him in a position of trust. You ignore entirely this side of the question, and only treat Major Glenn's acts as cruelties to peaceable Filipino citizens. I can remember when the journals of this country upheld and applauded an officer who, in the Civil War, ordered a man shot if he attempted to haul down the American flag, and cannot understand the present hysterics of some journals over the terrible violation of the laws of war in punishing a traitor, caught in the act, with the water cure only. The treatment may have been severe, but it is not permanently harmful.

I am astonished that these fearfully wrought-up journals have no word of commendation for our soldiers in the Philippines, who have suffered untold cruelties, assassinations, burning by slow fires, burial alive, mutilations, and atrocities; who have submitted to every indignity without resentment or complaint; and I have been greatly gratified over their excellent behavior under such trying circumstances. In their comments these journals are very careful not to say why these punishments are given to such traitors, knowing well if they did our people would look upon the acts as one of the necessities of war, and would wonder at the leniency of Major Glenn and his command.

Grenville M. Dodge.

New York, April 17.