154 Military Preparedness 



to command a division, or mayhap even an army- 

 corps, on a foreign expedition, especially when not 

 one of his important subordinates has ever so much 

 as seen five thousand troops gathered, fed, sheltered, 

 manoeuvred, and shipped. The marvel is, not that 

 there was blundering, but that there was so little, 

 in the late war with Spain. 



Captain (now Colonel) John Bigelow, Jr., in his 

 account of his personal experiences in command of 

 a troop of cavalry during the Santiago campaign, 

 has pictured the welter of confusion during that 

 campaign, and the utter lack of organization, and 

 of that skilled leadership which can come only 

 through practice. His book should be studied by 

 every man who wishes to see our army made what 

 it should be. In the Santiago campaign the army was 

 more than once uncomfortably near grave disaster, 

 from which it was saved by the remarkable fighting 

 qualities of its individual fractions, and, above all, 

 by the incompetency of its foes. To go against a 

 well-organized, well-handled, well-led foreign foe 

 under such conditions would inevitably have meant 

 failure and humiliation. Of course party dema 

 gogues and the thoughtless generally are sure to 

 credit these disasters to the people under whom they 

 occur, to the Secretary, or to the commander of the 

 army. 



As a matter of fact, the blame must rest in all 



