ave
been obtained from the Red Cross had really come from some other source,
chiefly from soldiers and government transports, whose provisions, of
course, could not be distinguished from ours after they had been taken
out of the original packages. Be this, however, as it may, the checks
upon fraud and imposition in the Red Cross scheme of distribution were
as efficient as the nature of the circumstances would allow, and I doubt
whether the loss through fraudulent applications or through collusion
between commissioners and applicants amounted to one tenth of one per
cent. The Red Cross furnished food in bulk to thirty-two thousand
half-starved people in the first five days after Santiago surrendered,
and in addition thereto fed ten thousand people every day in the
soup-kitchens managed by Mr. Michelson. I do not wish to make any unjust
or invidious comparisons, but I cannot refrain from saying,
nevertheless, that I did not happen to see any United States
quartermaster in Cuba who, in the short space of five days, had unloaded
and stored fourteen hundred tons of cargo, given hot soup daily to ten
thousand soldiers, and supplied an army of thirty-two thousand men with
ten days' rations. It is a record, I think, of which Miss Barton has
every reason to be proud.

But her beneficent work was not confined to the mere feeding of the
hungry in Santiago. She sent large quantities of cereals, canned goods,
and hospital supplies to our own soldiers in the camps on the adjacent
hills; she furnished medicines and food for sick and wounded to the
Spanish prison camp as well as to the Spanish army hospital, the civil
hospital, and the children's hospital in the city; she directed Dr.
Soyoso of her medical staff to open a clinic and dispensary, where five
surgeons and two nurses gave medical or surgical aid to more than three
thousand sick or sickening people every day; she sent hundreds of tons
of ice from the schooner _Morse_ to the hospitals, the camps, and the
transports going North with sick and wounded soldiers; she put up tents
to shelter fever-stricken Spanish prisoners from the tropical sunshine
while they were waiting to be taken on board the vessels that were to
carry them back to Spain; and in every way possible, and with all the
facilities that she had, she tried to alleviate the suffering caused by
neglect, incompetence, famine, and war.

CHAPTER XVII

MORRO CASTLE

In the course of the first week after I lan