The causes of these conditions are not far to seek. The United States has not had an army since 1866. There has been no such a thing as a brigade, a division, or a corps. There has been no opportunity to study and practice on a large scale, in a practical way, the problems of organization and supply. The Army has been administered as a unit, and the usual routine of business gradually became such that not a wheel could be turned nor a nail driven in any of the supply departments without express permission, previously obtained from the bureau chief in Washington. The same remarks apply equally to all the other staff departments. The administration had become a bureaucracy because the whole Army for thirty years had been administered as one body, without the subdivisions into organizations which are inevitable in war-time and in larger bodies.
War became a reality with great suddenness. Those who have grown gray in the service, and whose capacity, honesty, and industry had never been and can not be impeached, found themselves confronted with the problem of handling nearly three hundred thousand men, without authority to change the system of supply and transportation. The minutest acts of officers of these departments are regulated by laws of Congress, enacted with a view of the small regular force in time of peace, and with no provisions for modifications in war. In authorizing the formation of large volunteer armies, Congress did not authorize any change in the system of administration or make any emergency provision. As before, every detail of supply and transportation had to be authorized from the central head.
The administrative bureaus were handicapped to some extent by incompetent and ignorant members. Late in the campaign it was learned that the way to a “soft snap” was through the Capitol, and some came in that way who would certainly never have entered the Army in any other.
There were alleged staff officers who had tried to enter the service through the regular channels and who had failed, either by lack of ability or bad conduct, to keep up with the pace set by classmates at the Academy; there were others who were known as failures in civil life and as the “black sheep” of eminent families; and there were some who must have been utterly unknown before the war, as they will be afterward.
How these persons ever obtained places high above deserving officers of capacity and experience is a question which cries aloud for exposure—but in a good many cases they did. Indeed, it is to be observed that, for that matter, the next register of the Army will show a great many more promotions into the Volunteer service, of officers who never heard a hostile bullet during the war, who never left the United States at all, than it will of deserving officers who bore the heat and burden of the march and the battle.
“Reina Mercedes” Sunk by the “Iowa” near Mouth of Harbor of Santiago.
The most discouraging thing about it all to a line officer is that this same register will afford no means of determining who did the service and who did the “baby act.” Lieut. Blank will be borne thereon as major and subsequently colonel of the Steenth Volunteers (which never left the State rendezvous, probably) during the war with Spain; Lieut. Blank No. 2 will be carried on the same book as second lieutenant, —— Infantry, during the same war. The gentle reader will at once “spot” the man who was so highly promoted as a gallant fellow who distinguished himself upon the bloody field; the other will be set down as the man who did nothing and deserved nothing.
Yet—the ones who went received no promotion, and those who staid behind and by their careless incompetence permitted camps amid the peaceful scenes of homes and plenty to become the hot-beds of fever and disease—these are the ones borne as field and other officers of the Volunteers.