The Dalles daily chronicle. [volume] (The Dalles, Or.) 1890-1948, 1898-09-13
IMAGINARY CAMP HORRORS.

headed 1.-The Truth About the Awful
Division Hospital" at Camp Alger.
This broadside of sensational stuff is
signed by one of the Republics home
staff, and it is evident that he was
instructed 20 make the matter as har-
rowing as possible. It deals with
generalities, charging criminal neg
lect, but carefully avoids official regi-
mental figures. No one can tell after
wading through the seven columns of
verbiage, cut up into short gasps of
denunciation, how many men have
died at Camp Alger. But the IA
miliar picture is imbedded in the
page of the young volunteer of 20
stepping off blithely to the war and
returning four months later an
emaclated wreck, looking every day
of so. To some persons closely in
terested in the troops at Camp Alger
these statements, presented with all
the arts of the scare head, may cause
distress. But to others, better in
formed concerning the source and
the motives behind, they will! be dis.
missed as deliberately cooked up for
political effect and belonging to the
order of campaign roorbacks. The
variety is of the meanest, for the
feelings of the relatives of soldiers
are entirely disregarded.
Any one who cares to go through
this page of rot, fixed up mechanical
ly to suit purpose, will be struck
by its excess of words and paucity of
definite figures. The upper third Of
the page is cheap and maudlin
rhetoric about the robust lad who,
after 12O days of camp life in Vir-
ginia, is transformed into an aged i'm
beetle. 1t is not enough to pile up
the agony about the past and present
situation. The future is darkened
with despair. "Many graves" says
the writer, Twill have to be dug,
many hearts Will mourn, many tears
will fall, ere death will have ceased
to find victims of the incompetency
of those who managed this cam
paign." The name of Camp Alger,
it is asserted, will be among the
soldiers ga synonym for hell Then
follow charges that $4,000 men were
assembled at short notice; that the
camp was not changed at the end of
thirty day S; that the water supply at
first was insufficient and contaminat-
ed that the river was ten miles dis
tant and bathing difficult; that sup
plies became tainted in the FIVE mile
haul from the railway to camp; that
the officers were pampered while the
men suffered, and that everything
went wrong in the hospitals from
first to last. How many of the %
900 men died under this treatment?
The staff correspondent fails to say
word on this point His instructions
did not include anything so specific.
When the facts interfere with his
theme, the lawful hospital, it is bad
for the facts.
Many of the sick of the Missouri
regiments have been brought back to
the state. Of the number taken to
the ST. Louis hospitals one has died.
The mortality in the Missouri regi
ments at Camp Alger has not been
high nor unusual. 1t seems strange
that 4 whole page on the subject
should be worked up without giving
the figures; that is, it seems strange
until the design is considered. In
the four months service this year of
100000 men the death rate in the
army has been "a per 1000, or 1872
per year, lower rate than that OF
London. an exceptionally tealthy
city. In 1861 tie annual mortality
from disease in the union army was
% per 1000. In Camp Alger it was
at least One-thIrtl less. The British