rom Secretary Alger, ordering him, on the recommendation of
Surgeon-General Sternberg, to move the army into the interior, to San
Luis, where it is healthier.

As a result of the conference General Shafter will insist upon the
immediate withdrawal of the army North.

As an explanation of the situation the following letter from Colonel
Theodore Roosevelt, commanding the First Cavalry, to General Shafter,
was handed by the latter to the correspondent of the Associated Press
for publication:

MAJOR-GENERAL SHAFTER.

SIR: In a meeting of the general and medical officers called
by you at the Palace this morning we were all, as you know,
unanimous in our views of what should be done with the army.
To keep us here, in the opinion of every officer commanding
a division or a brigade, will simply involve the destruction
of thousands. There is no possible reason for not shipping
practically the entire command North at once. Yellow-fever
cases are very few in the cavalry division, where I command
one of the two brigades, and not one true case of yellow
fever has occurred in this division, except among the men
sent to the hospital at Siboney, where they have, I believe,
contracted it.

But in this division there have been 1,500 cases of malarial
fever. Hardly a man has yet died from it, but the whole
command is so weakened and shattered as to be ripe for dying
like rotten sheep, when a real yellow-fever epidemic instead
of a fake epidemic, like the present one, strikes us, as it
is bound to do if we stay here at the height of the sickness
season, August and the beginning of September. Quarantine
against malarial fever is much like quarantining against the
toothache.

All of us are certain that as soon as the authorities at
Washington fully appreciate the condition of the army, we
shall be sent home. If we are kept here it will in all human
possibility mean an appalling disaster, for the surgeons here
estimate that over half the army, if kept here during the
sickly season, will die.

This is not only terrible from the stand-point of the
individual lives lost, but it means ruin from the stand-point
of military efficiency of the flower of the American army,
for the great bulk of the regulars are here with you. The
sick list, large though it is, exceeding four t