The Anaconda standard. [volume] (Anaconda, Mont.) 1889-1970, 1898-09-07
WAR DEPARTMENT HORRORS.
Criminal Ill Treatment of Our Troops
and Its -eguen

From the New York Herald.
Infamous is the only word to describe
the treatment that has been inflicted upon
our patriotic soldiers and under which.
despite the indignant outbursts of a hor-
ror-stricken people, thousands of them
are still suffering to-day.
What mockery IL seems TO prepare a
great civic ovation to men like the re-
turned remnant of the list, who, unable
to walk. were drawn up Broadway IN
street cars on Monday, the ghosts OF
their former selves. or like the 200 mem
bers of the Sth. who arrived yesterday.
emaciated, fcver-stricken. pitiable objects
to break the hearts of their friends and
make the most hardened spectators weep,
Had they come back to us reduced to
such a state by the wounds of a forei>n
foe there would be "A thrill of pride to
assuage our grief, a feeling of eXultation
in what they had dared and endured for
the flag We love. But when une American
people think of those gone down to death
and these others tortured and physically
wrecked-many like the Sth. who had
never left our own kindly soil-uselessly
neediessly, the victims of ~job-and-rob pol
iticians and constructors and of criminal
ly incompetent and heartlessly Indifferent
officials. there come a sob i'm the throat,
a suggestive clutching of the fingers and
a light in the eyes that BODIES i'll for the
guilty ones when the responsibility shall
be fixed.
There is no use in ostrich-like attempts
at concealment. The Notifying, shame
full story is known TO the whole world. A
country renowned as the land of plenty. "A
people unmatched i'm generosity and famed
throughout the world for its prodigious
fertility of resourc and skill in the arts
of transportation, d government supplied
with a war fund of hundreds of millions
to be dispensed at the mere nod of It's
chief magistrate, and-its gallant soldiers
subjected to starvation and privations
such as Algerine pirates would have hes
itated to infict upon their enslaved pris-
oners. Heroes returning in broken health
from the trenches of Santiago have been
packed like cattle into transports. without
medicines, without attendants, without
food which they could eat except what
little some of them could afford to buy at
extortionate p~rices-and this on board
government vessels. directly commanded
by United States officials. Camps have
been established i'm localities and under
conditions to rapidly convert them into
pest holes-and Assistant Surgeon Gen
eTal Sem says to-day that the hospital
arrangements at Camp Wikof are bad
and that in a month an epidemic of ma
lignant typhoid will develop at that point.
The Indictment is too long TO recite. Its
sickening counts are familiar to the
whole people.
At the outbreak of the war the Herald
pointed out the w~ickedness and danger
of appointing civilian sons and "brOth-
ers-in-law' and OBSERVATION-DISCLOSURES
pull to positions that called for ability
and experience for transporting, provi-
sioning and providing for the troops In
health and sickness. In making these APP
pointments there were sown the seeds
of the bitter fruit we are now eating. The
American people are moved by the awful
abuses of to-day as they have never been
since the civil war.
Their Indignation Is not to be allayed
by casual visits of high personages to the
camps. These wrongs and a~buses-yes,
crimes-must be rigidly investigated and
the stigma placed where IL belongs. There
are defects in our military system which
must be remedied: our army will proba-
bly, nave to be reorganized, and this inves-
tigation, while enabling the American
people to punish the guilty ones, will re-
veal the weaknesses of our present organ
ization and indicate TIE lines on which IL
must be reconstructed.