If these statements are not true, Dr. Kennedy should be brought to trial by court martial for conduct prejudicial to good order and discipline, if not conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman, in publicly making injurious charges that have no foundation in fact. If they are true, they furnish another proof that the lack of medical supplies and medical attention in the army was due to official negligence and inefficiency. In June and July it might have been urged with some show of plausibility that a sudden and unexpected emergency, in the shape of a wide-spread epidemic of fever, had taken the army by surprise and found it unprepared; but with the coast of the United States only four or five days distant, with uninterrupted telegraphic communication, and with good landing facilities in a safe and sheltered harbor, there was no excuse for a lack of medicines and hospital supplies on August 12--seven weeks after the army landed and four weeks after it entered the city of Santiago. Defenders of General Shafter and the War Department try to excuse the wrecking of the army by saying that "the invasion of Cuba was not a pleasure excursion," that "war is not strictly a hygienic business," that "the outcry about sickness and neglect is largely sensational and for the manufacture of political effect," and that the general criticism of the management of the campaign is "a concerted effort to hide the glories of our magnificent triumph under alleged faults and shortcomings in its conduct"; but these excuses and counter-charges do not break the force of the essential and officially admitted fact that our army landed on the Cuban coast on June 24 in a high state of health and efficiency, and in less than six weeks had not only lost seventy-five per cent. of its effective strength, but had been reduced by disease to a condition so low that, in the opinion of eight of its general officers, it "must perish" unless immediately sent back to the United States. Secretary Alger declares that management which produces these results "is war"; but I should rather describe it as incapacity for war. If we do not learn a lesson from the Santiago campaign--if we continue to equip, feed, and manage our armies in the field as we equipped, fed, and managed the Fifth Army-Corps in Cuba--our newly acquired tropical possessions will cost us more in pensions than they will ever produce in revenue. FOOTNOTES: [1] Referring to the ten thousand men spoken of in the secretary's telegram of May 27. [2] Report of General Miles ("Army and Navy Register," November 12, p. 311). General Shafter reported to the Secretary of War, September 13, that he sailed from Tampa with 815 officers and 16,072 men. General Miles is probably right. [3] I spell this word as it is spelled by the officers of the Spanish-American Iron Company, who say that "Baiquiri" is erroneous.