Conference of Officers in Charge of Government Hospitals Serving Veterans of the World War
History
Conference of Officers in Charge of Government Hospitals Serving Veterans of the World War
Medicine, Military; Military hospitals; World War, 1914-1918 -- Veterans -- Medical care -- United States
Now why is it necessary for you to accept, without mental reservation,
the necessity of the existence of this coordinating board under which
you act and the authority of the Chief Coordinator of that board as
representing the President? Let me say in connection with this that the
rights of the independent departments and establishments are jealously
regarded under these executive orders.
What I want to impress upon the minds of all is the necessity of these
co-ordinating boards to enable you to do your work properly.
Take it in ships. In coordinating shipping transportation, you have got
to have Mr. Weeks, Mr. Denby and Mr. Lasker in contact in connection
with a decision involving the economical use of ships. How can anybody
get them together without the authority of the President? Suppose I was
expected to call them together without the authority of the President. I
would go to Mr. Weeks for example and wait until the Senators were
through seeing him, and then perhaps because of his personal friendship
persuade him to go over with me to see Mr. Denby. When we had seen Denby
how could we get the two together with Lasker? You could not get
anywhere in this co-ordinating work without a delegated authority from
the President to compel contact between high officials.
In connection with this great work of yours in which you spent last year
three-fourths of a billion dollars, you cannot have it run right without
the existence of this co-ordinating Board,—without that authority to
make a bird’s-eye view of the whole situation,—without that authority to
say why this building, for example, is unnecessary, because there exists
a superfluity of this sort of building in another department. What’s the
use of endeavoring to catalogue those activities in which there is
duplication, in which you have got to have the bird’s-eye view, and
would never get proper action taken, unless you have in existence this
Board created by the authority of the President!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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