ARMY VETERINARY LEGISLATION 
779 
If this provision is adopted it means that the officers of such a 
corps are not under the control of the officers of the line. 
In the last war with Spain there was a case—there may 
have been others—but there was a case where a brigadier-gen¬ 
eral in charge of a camp with a thousand sick men found that 
the doctors in charge of the hospital were spending their after¬ 
noons on hotel porticos away from the camp. He told them to 
to go back to duty and take charge of the sick men in the hos¬ 
pital. He was informed that he was not in a position to give 
such an order. And, Mr. Chairman, he only got the medical 
corps back to their duties when, after going 120 miles, he was 
enabled to find at division headquarters an authority which had 
the right to give the order to them. 
Now, a doctor may rightly order a man out of the ranks, if 
he is sick and unable to perform duty, and the doctor may 
rightly send him to a hospital whether his commander assent 
or no. That is where the question is of human life. But when 
we come to dealing with horses and mules, a very different ease 
is presented, for there may be conditions which require the 
quartermaster to work his mules or horses for army transporta¬ 
tion whether they are sick or well, and there should be no in¬ 
terference with the performance of his duty under such circum¬ 
stances. 
If a captain of a troop or battery desires to use the horses or 
mules under his command, sick or well, and finds it necessary to 
do so if the exigencies of the service so require, no man should 
be allowed to interfere. You can and should employ a veter¬ 
inary surgeon where his services are needed ; you may make 
him an officer, but you cannot safely employ or establish a vet¬ 
erinary corps which shall in any way supersede the power of 
the commanding officer. 
As I have already said, the surgeon may send a man into the 
hospital and may order him out of the ranks in case of sickness, 
but the officer in charge of a battery or a company has the right 
to use horseflesh—noble as that animal may be—under any cir¬ 
cumstances which may present themselves to him. He has 
enough staff subjection already. The man of the Army, the 
officer of the line, is subject to a system of staff inspection and 
orders unknown in any other country. It may be now noticed 
because it will come up later on in the consideration of the bill. 
He cannot get provisions without going to the subsistence de¬ 
partment or transportation without the aid of the quartermas¬ 
ter’s corps. 
