sound
of that tremolo the crowds scattered as if by magic. San Francisco was
virtually under martial law, and order was wrought from chaos.

After the quake the President and Secretary Taft were chiefly
concerned at first with getting supplies, and that work was performed
with extraordinary expedition and thoroughness. At the same time they
were rushing troops, marines, and sailors to guard the devastated
city.

The marvelous work done by the soldiers, from General Funston down to
the newest recruit, won the admiration and congratulations of the
entire country. The sentiment everywhere was and is that the army has
demonstrated its splendid capacity not only to preserve peace in the
face of armed resistance, but to take charge of affairs in a stricken
city at a time when intelligent discipline was more needed than
everything else.

Secretary Taft expressed the belief that congress would have to give
him absolution for the violence he had done the constitution in those
terrible days. He ordered General Funston to take complete command of
the city, to put martial law into effect, and to enforce sanitary
regulations without regard to the wishes of the people.

The war department had been morally responsible for the unhesitating
way in which the troops shot down looters and the people who refused
to understand that great situations must be controlled without regard
to law.

It was the soldiers apparently who brought order out of chaos. They
headed the unfortunate refugees farther and farther on ahead of the
flames, until finally they had located the vast homeless mob in the
Presidio, in the Golden Gate Park, and in other wide expanses. General
Funston had not exceeded his orders. He was given full discretion to
employ his forces as he saw fit. He turned loose the soldiers under
him with general instructions to act as their own good sense dictated,
and it is to the eternal credit of the noncommissioned officers and
the privates that every report sent to the war department and all the
descriptions in the press reports indicated that the army had saved
the situation in San Francisco.

When a sturdy sergeant brought down the butt of his musket on the
counter of a bake shop where they were beginning to sell bread at 75
cents a loaf, and announced that bread thereafter in that concern
would be sold at 10 cents a loaf or there would be one less baker in
the world, he was guilty of an act which in any other time might have