But I want to give credit to those hospital corps men of the Navy, who worked with the Marines. Those fellows deserve a gold medal qr the highest award they can receive. Why, before we could reach our objective, they were right out on the field picking up and tagging the wounded. They didn't mind the danger and did their duty without protection of any kind. They were unarmed and could not shoot a German if they did run across one. With the arrangements by which the Navy was to man the transports, a new and unexpected duty, it became necessary for the Medical Corps to expand its personnel and undertake a service that called for discretion and judgment as well as medical skill. Never in the history of troop movements have troops been so well taken care of, their health protected in every possible manner, the sanitary precautions provided, and such attention and elaborate provision made for the care of the sick and wounded. The larger transports were indeed combined transports and hospital ships. This transport work was taken over and performed entirely by the Medical Department of the Navy without extra appropriation and without expense to the Army. Every contingency was met. The provisions were ample for the care of sick troops in transit, and there were returned on naval transports, 151,649 Army sick, wounded and insane; 4,385 Navy; and 3,625 Marines from the expeditionary forces in France. The Navy always put the man before the gun. If a member of the Navy did wrong, we sought to save him. Two thousand men, punished for offenses committed, were restored during the war, and most of them made good. This was possible by the restoration of morale through the Mutual Welfare League organized in naval prisons. It was an experiment that contravened all former military methods, and was inaugurated by Thomas Mott Osborne. Desiring to substitute modern penology for the methods in vogue, I requested Mr. Osborne to become head of the naval prison, and he was commissioned as lieutenant commander in the Reserves. In the League he gave a large measure of self government to prisoners. He used discipline as a means of helping young men to find themselves, and its success was most encouraging. Too much honor cannot be given him. "Treat men as pawns and nine-pins," said Emerson, "and you shall suffer as well as they. If you leave out their heart you shall lose your own." It was that spirit, as well as the disuse of bread and water and solitary confinement and other ancient punishments, which made naval discipline the pattern for dealing with military offenders. There was no "hard boiled" discipline tolerated in the Navy. Courts-martial were reviewed in a spirit of meting out justice, with consideration and discrimination, as well as mercy. Admiral George R. Clark, Judge Advocate General during most of the war, set new standards of military court procedure and lessened the rigors of punishment. CHAPTER XXXIV FIGHTING THE PROFITEERS