five thousand. Of course the
greater part of these sick men were not in the hospitals. I saw hundreds
of them dragging themselves about the camps with languid steps, or lying
in their little dog-kennel tents on the ground; but all of them ought to
have been in hospitals, and would have been had our hospital space and
facilities been adequate. Inasmuch, however, as our hospital
accommodations were everywhere deplorably inadequate, and inasmuch as
our surgeons sent to the yellow-fever camps many patients who were
suffering merely from malarial fever, a majority of our sick soldiers
remained in their own tents, from necessity or from choice, and received
only such care as their comrades could give them.

Yellow fever and calenture broke out among the troops in camp around
Santiago about the same time that they appeared in Siboney. Calenture
soon became epidemic, and in less than a fortnight there were thousands
of cases, and nearly one half of the army was unfit for active service,
if not completely disabled.

The questions naturally arise, Was this state of affairs inevitable, or
might it have been foreseen as a possibility and averted? Is the climate
of eastern Cuba in the rainy season so deadly that Northern troops
cannot be subjected to it for a month without losing half their
effective force from sickness, or was the sickness due to other and
preventable causes? In trying to answer these questions I shall say not
what I think, nor what I suppose, nor what I have reason to believe, but
what I actually know, from personal observation and from the testimony
of competent and trustworthy witnesses. I was three different times at
the front, spent a week in the field-hospital of the Fifth Army-Corps,
and saw for myself how our soldiers ate, drank, slept, worked, and
suffered. I shall try not to exaggerate anything, but, on the other
hand, I shall not suppress or conceal anything, or smooth anything over.
Poultney Bigelow was accused of being unpatriotic, disloyal, and even
seditious because he told what I am now convinced was the truth about
the state of affairs at Tampa; but it seems to me that when the lives of
American soldiers are at stake it is a good deal more patriotic and far
more in accordance with the duty of a good citizen to tell a
disagreeable and unwelcome truth that may lead to a reform than it is to
conceal the truth and pretend that everything is all right when it is
not all right.

The truth, briefly st