Poverty, disease, and crime are largely due to defects of social conditions and surroundings.

The supervision of these agencies is at present limited to the police.

As a matter of fact, there is nothing whatever, in which this Government is interested, to investigate about this transaction.

The wickedness of the slanders is only surpassed by their fatuity.

While the criminal offense of which Mr. Pulitzer has been guilty is in form a libel upon individuals, the great injury done is in blackening the good name of the American people.

These stories were scurrilous and libelous in character and false in every essential particular.

They consist simply of a string of infamous libels.

All our transactions were carried on openly, and were published in detail.

So utterly baseless are the stories that apparently they represent in part merely material collected for campaign purposes and in part stories originally concocted with a view of possible blackmail.

I directed or approved every action, and am responsible for all that was done in carrying out the will of the Congress; and the provisions of the law, enacted by Congress after exhaustive examination and discussion, were scrupulously…

It is therefore a high national duty to bring to justice this vilifier of the American people, this man who wantonly and wickedly and without one shadow of justification seeks to blacken the character of reputable private citizens and to…

The inventor of the story about Mr. Charles P. Taft, for instance, evidently supposed that at some period of the Panama purchase Mr. W. H. Taft was Secretary of War, whereas in reality Mr. W. H. Taft never became Secretary of War until…

Now, these stories as a matter of fact need no investigation whatever.

The results have made it obvious that only by carrying on the investigation as the War Department has actually carried it on is there the slightest chance of bringing the offenders to justice or of separating not the innocent, for there…

I believe we can afford to reinstate any of these men who now truthfully tell what has happened, give all the aid they can to fix the responsibility upon those who are really guilty, and show that they themselves had no guilty knowledge…

This report enables us to fix with tolerable definiteness at least some of the criminals who took the lead in the murderous shooting of private citizens at Brownsville.

Nevertheless, it is to be said in partial extenuation that they were probably cowed by threats, made by the more desperate of the men who had actually been engaged in the shooting, as to what would happen to any man who failed to protect…

I recommend that a law be passed allowing the Secretary of War, within a fixed period of time, say a year, to reinstate any of these soldiers whom he, after careful examination, finds to have been innocent and whom he finds to have done…