Mr. Collins’s letter proceeds: “When I went to see him [Otis] he repeated the same old story about the insurrection going to pieces.”
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.”[46]
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.
[1] See General Hughes’s testimony before Senate Committee, 1902, Senate Document 331, p. 508.
[2] See Annual Report of the Secretary of War to the President for 1899, pp. 7 et seq.
[3] This is no mere attempt at rhetorical decoration. Said General MacArthur to the Senate Committee in 1902 concerning Aguinaldo: “He was the incarnation of the feelings of the Filipinos.” Senate Document 331, 1902, p. 1926.
[4] Senate Document 331, 1902, pp. 2927 et seq.
[5] Senate Document 208, 56th Cong., 1st Sess., p. 23.
[6] Senate Document 62, 55th Cong., 3d Sess., 1898–9, p. 383.