The questions naturally arise, Was this state of affairs inevitable, or might it have been foreseen as a possibility and averted? Is the climate of eastern Cuba in the rainy season so deadly that Northern troops cannot be subjected to it for a month without losing half their effective force from sickness, or was the sickness due to other and preventable causes? In trying to answer these questions I shall say not what I think, nor what I suppose, nor what I have reason to believe, but what I actually know, from personal observation and from the testimony of competent and trustworthy witnesses. I was three different times at the front, spent a week in the field-hospital of the Fifth Army-Corps, and saw for myself how our soldiers ate, drank, slept, worked, and suffered. I shall try not to exaggerate anything, but, on the other hand, I shall not suppress or conceal anything, or smooth anything over. Poultney Bigelow was accused of being unpatriotic, disloyal, and even seditious because he told what I am now convinced was the truth about the state of affairs at Tampa; but it seems to me that when the lives of American soldiers are at stake it is a good deal more patriotic and far more in accordance with the duty of a good citizen to tell a disagreeable and unwelcome truth that may lead to a reform than it is to conceal the truth and pretend that everything is all right when it is not all right. The truth, briefly stated, is that, owing to bad management, lack of foresight, and the almost complete breakdown of the commissary and medical departments of the army, our soldiers in Cuba suffered greater hardships and privations, in certain ways, than were ever before endured by an American army in the field. They were not half equipped, nor half fed, nor half cared for when they were wounded or sick; they had to sleep in dog-kennel shelter-tents, which afforded little or no protection from tropical rains; they had to cook in coffee-cups and old tomato-cans because they had no camp-kettles; they never had a change of underclothing after they landed; they were forced to drink brook-water that was full of disease-germs because they had no suitable vessels in which to boil it or keep it after it had been boiled; they lived a large part of the time on hard bread and bacon, without beans, rice, or any of the other articles which go to make up the full army ration; and when wounded they had to wait hours for surgical aid, and then, half dead from pain and exhaustion, they lay all night on the water-soaked ground, without shelter, blanket, pillow, food, or attendance. To suppose that an army will keep well and maintain its efficiency under such conditions is as unreasonable and absurd as to suppose that a man will thrive and grow fat in the stockaded log pen of a Turkish quarantine. It cannot be fairly urged in explanation of the sickness in the army that it was due to the deadliness of the Cuban climate and was therefore what policies