First, the thing that is being done: All the United States is the debtor to the medical men who have accomplished such remarkable work on the Isthmus of Panama. You hear very loose talk about making the dirt fly in Panama. Before making the dirt fly it was necessary to get the microbes under; it was necessary to grapple with the mosquitoes; necessary to eradicate disease. That has been done to perfection. We have had the foundation laid for that wonderful piece of constructive engineering work, to dig the giant canal. Too much praise can not be given to those who have done this work in Panama. So much for tribute to your compeers. Now as to the need of your compeers. You recollect the complaint made about hygienic conditions during the war with Spain. Complaint was made that the troops were not properly treated, etc. The blame rested, not on any one man then in office, but upon our people as a whole who had declined, through their representatives, to make provision long in advance for meeting such a need. If we had a war break out to-morrow and had to raise any large army, there would be an immediate breakdown in the medical department simply because at present our medical corps is numerically only fit to take care of about forty per cent of the Regular Army as it is now. The medical corps is not numerically fit to grapple with a campaign in which our whole Army as it is, the little Army as it is, should be employed. And of course if we had to mobilize an army of volunteers we would under present conditions have to count upon widespread disaster through the shortcomings in the medical and sanitary and hygienic arrangements rendered inevitable by our present lack of preparation. The Japanese have given us a good lesson in this as in many other particulars, by the way they handled their army in the recent war. One of the reasons why their medical department did well—the main reason—was the fact that they had an ample supply of doctors who had been practiced in time of peace in doing the duties they would have to do in war. And until we have provision for an ample corps of doctors in the Army so that they can be practiced in time of peace we will not have prepared as we ought to prepare for the possibilities of war. Until we thus prepare we can make up our minds that we are ourselves responsible for any disaster that occurs to any army that the United States may raise in the future; not the man who may be at the head of the Army at the time. The tendency is to attack the men in office at the time. That is utterly unjust, and the people themselves, and the representatives of the people in public life, who have failed to provide the necessary means in advance—they are responsible when disaster comes. That applies to the medical department, and it applies to every other branch of the military establishment just as much. TO THE MEMBERS OF THE INTERSTATE NATIONAL GUARD ASSOCIATION, AT THE WHITE HOUSE, JANUARY 22, 1906