t to General Humphreys in Cuba, testified before the
Investigating Commission on November 16 that he had fifty ambulances at
Tampa, and that he was about to load them on one of the transports when
General Shafter appeared and ordered them left behind.

The surgeon-general declared, in a letter to the "Medical Record," dated
August 6, that "General Shafter's army at Tampa was thoroughly well
supplied with the necessary medicines, dressings, etc., for
field-service; but, owing to insufficient transportation, he left behind
at Tampa his reserve medical supplies and ambulance corps."

General Shafter himself admits that he had not enough medical supplies,
but seems to assert, by implication, that he was not to blame for the
deficiency. In a telegram to Adjutant-General Corbin, dated "Santiago,
August 3," he said: "From the day this expedition left Tampa until
to-day there has never been sufficient medical attendance or medicines
for the daily wants of the command, and three times within that time the
command has been almost totally out of medicines. I say this on the word
of the medical directors, who have in each instance reported the matter
to me, the last time yesterday, when the proposition was made to me to
take medicines away from the Spanish hospital.... The surgeons have
worked as well as any men that ever lived, and their complaint has been
universal of lack of means and facilities. I do not complain of this,
for no one could have foreseen all that would be required; but I will
not quietly submit to having the onus laid on me for the lack of these
hospital facilities."

The state of affairs disclosed by these official reports and telegrams
seems to me as melancholy and humiliating as anything of the kind ever
recorded in the history of American wars. Three ambulances for a whole
corps of sixteen thousand men; an army "almost totally out of medicines"
three times in seven weeks; and a proposition to make up our own
deficiencies by seizing and confiscating the medical supplies of a
Spanish hospital! I do not wonder that General Shafter wishes to escape
responsibility for such a manifestation of negligence or incompetence;
but I do not see how he can be allowed to do so. It is just as much the
business of a commanding general to know that he has medicines and
ambulances enough as it is to know that he has food and ammunition
enough. He is the man who plans the campaign, and, to a certain extent,
predetermines the nu