I am not competent to speak save in the most general terms of your professional duties. I do want, however, to call your attention to one or two features connected with them. In the first place: In connection with the work you do for the service you have certain peculiar advantages in doing work that will be felt for the whole profession. For instance, it will fall to your lot to deal with certain types of tropical diseases. You will have to deal with them as no ordinary American doctor, no matter how great his experience, will have to deal with them, and you should fit yourselves by most careful study and preparation, so that you shall not only be able to grapple with the cases as they come up, but in grappling with them to make and record observations upon them that will be of permanent value to your fellows in civil life. You can there do what no civilian doctor can possibly do. There probably is not a branch of the profession into which, during your career, you will not have to go; no type of disease that you will not have to treat. But there are certain diseases you will have to treat that the ordinary man who stays at home, of course, does not; and it is of consequence to the entire medical profession that you should so fit yourself by study, by preparation, that you shall not only be able to deal with those cases, but to deal with them in a way that will be of advantage to your stay-at-home brethren. There is one other point. Every effort should, of course, be made to provide you with ample means to do your work. Every effort ought to be made to persuade the National Legislature to take that view of the situation; to remember that in case of war it is out of the question to improvise a great medical service for the Army and the Navy. The need of the increase would be more keenly felt in the Army than in the Navy, because it is always the Army that undergoes the greatest expansion in time of war. But it is felt in both services. And when, as is perfectly certain to be the case if ever a war comes, and if we have made no greater preparation than at present, there is fever in the camps, there is sickness among the volunteer forces, it will be mere dishonest folly for the public men, and especially for the public press, to shriek against the people who happen to be in power at that time. Let them, if ever such occasion arises, solemnly think over and repent of the fact that they have not made their representatives provide adequately in advance for the medical system in its personnel and its material, for the organization, and for the physical instruments necessary to make that organization effective. Only adequate preparation in advance will obviate the trouble which otherwise is certain to come if we have a war. Let critics remember not to blame the people in power when such a breakdown comes, but to blame themselves, the people of the United States, because they have not had