As to the charge of suppressing the real condition of our sick in the hospitals, Mr. Collins says that General Otis remarked that the "hospitals were full of perfectly well men who were shirking and should be turned out." On June 2, 1899, according to General Otis's report (p. 121), sixty per cent. of one of the State volunteer regiments were in hospital sick or wounded and there were in its ranks an average of but eight men to a company fit for duty. The report of the regimental surgeon stating this was forwarded by General Otis to Washington with the comment that there were few cases of serious illness; that the then "present station of these troops"--the place where the fighting was hottest, San Fernando--"is considered by the Filipinos as a health resort," and that "when orders to take passage to the United States are issued, both the Montana and South Dakota troops will recover with astonishing rapidity." [233] This round robin of course produced a profound sensation in the United States. It was just what the American public had long suspected was the case. Shortly afterward Secretary of War Alger resigned. Coming as it did on the heels of the scandal about "embalmed beef" having been furnished to the army in Cuba, it made him too much of a load for the Administration to carry. He was succeeded by Mr. Root, an eminent member of the New York Bar, whose masterful mind soon saw the essentials of the situation and proceeded to get a volunteer army recruited, equipped, and sent to the Philippines without further unnecessary delay. CHAPTER XII OTIS AND THE WAR (Continued) And now, a man of head being at the centre of it, the whole matter gets vital.--Carlyle's French Revolution. There can surely be little doubt in any quarter that Mr. Root is, in intellectual endowment and equipment at least, one of the greatest, if he is not the greatest, of living American statesmen. Mankind will always yield due acclaim to men who, in great emergencies, see the essentials of a given situation, and at once proceed to get the thing done that ought to be done. Whether the war in the Philippines was regrettable or not, it had become, by midsummer of 1899, supremely important, from any rational and patriotic standpoint, to end it as soon as possible. Mr. Root had not been in office as Secretary of War very long before fleets of troop-ships, carrying some twenty-five well-equipped volunteer regiments, [234] were swarming out of New York harbor bound for Manila by way of the Suez Canal, and out of the Golden Gate for the same destination via Honolulu. Nor was there any confusion as in the Cuban helter-skelter. Everything went as if by clockwork. Moreover, along with the new and ample force, went a clear, masterly, comprehensive plan of campaign, prepared, not by General Otis at Manila, but in the War Department at Washington, by officers already familiar with the islands.