The surgeon-general declared, in a letter to the "Medical Record," dated August 6, that "General Shafter's army at Tampa was thoroughly well supplied with the necessary medicines, dressings, etc., for field-service; but, owing to insufficient transportation, he left behind at Tampa his reserve medical supplies and ambulance corps." General Shafter himself admits that he had not enough medical supplies, but seems to assert, by implication, that he was not to blame for the deficiency. In a telegram to Adjutant-General Corbin, dated "Santiago, August 3," he said: "From the day this expedition left Tampa until to-day there has never been sufficient medical attendance or medicines for the daily wants of the command, and three times within that time the command has been almost totally out of medicines. I say this on the word of the medical directors, who have in each instance reported the matter to me, the last time yesterday, when the proposition was made to me to take medicines away from the Spanish hospital.... The surgeons have worked as well as any men that ever lived, and their complaint has been universal of lack of means and facilities. I do not complain of this, for no one could have foreseen all that would be required; but I will not quietly submit to having the onus laid on me for the lack of these hospital facilities." The state of affairs disclosed by these official reports and telegrams seems to me as melancholy and humiliating as anything of the kind ever recorded in the history of American wars. Three ambulances for a whole corps of sixteen thousand men; an army "almost totally out of medicines" three times in seven weeks; and a proposition to make up our own deficiencies by seizing and confiscating the medical supplies of a Spanish hospital! I do not wonder that General Shafter wishes to escape responsibility for such a manifestation of negligence or incompetence; but I do not see how he can be allowed to do so. It is just as much the business of a commanding general to know that he has medicines and ambulances enough as it is to know that he has food and ammunition enough. He is the man who plans the campaign, and, to a certain extent, predetermines the number of sick and wounded; he is the man who makes requisition upon the War Department for transports, mules, and wagons enough to carry the army and its equipment to the field where it is to operate; and he is the man who should consider all contingencies and emergencies likely to arise as a result of climatic or other local conditions, and who should see that ample provision is made for them. General Shafter says that "no one could have foreseen all that would be required." That is probably true; but any one, it seems to me, could have foreseen that an army of sixteen thousand men, which was expected to attack intrenched positions, would need more than three ambulances for the transportation of the wounded, to say nothing of the sick. The