The daily morning journal and courier., 1898-12-21
SKATER TELLS HIS STORY
DECLARES SANTIAGO CAMPAIGN
 VAS 4 MILITARY SUCCESS.

Also That It's Cost Was Cheap at 500
 Men Lost in the Fighting Getting
 OfSupplies to the Front the One Prob
 lem of the Campaign-MiIes Unwilling
 to Testify.
 Washington, Dec 20.-The war inves- tigating commission this afternoon stat. ed that General Miles had communicat- ed to the commission his unwillingness to volunteer testimony. A message was accordingly sent to the adjutant general directing him to request the appearance of General Miles before the board. No reply had been received to this commu- nication uD to 2 o'clock, when General Shafter rather unexpectedly appeared, accompanied by an aide, Colonel Miley. General Shafter's story of the opera tions at Santiago was tersely told, but at times he was quite vivid and inter- esting in detail. Briefly summed up, his estimate of the Santiago campaign was that it had been military success and cheap at the cost of the 800 men lost in the fighting. He considered the expedition to have been as well fitted out as the time allowed would permit and said that in looking back he had no criticisms of his plans to make and would not change them if the events had to be gone through again. He said he had no complaints of any sort to make and would be loath to intrude them at this time, if he had
 Regarding his plans General Shafter said they were changed three times by the war department, and once he act- ually started, but was called back by the report of Spanish warships off the coast He said the transport fleet was not sufficiently large to accommodate 17,0O0 men for any length of time at sea, but all were so anxious to go that he risked considerable crowding to take all the men possible. He admitted that he took chances in doing this, but he said the weather was good and there was no mishap to regret.
 As to medical supplies, General Shaf. ter said; You know medical supplies are the one thing that commanding officer never knows about. The sur- geon is supposed to know what he wants. My medical officer said he thought he had enough medical sup plies for the temporary service to which we thought we were destined. fc ', 4 |. geon was mistaken The ammunition supply was ample''
 As to supplies, General Shafter said there was nothing essential left behind. How about the ambulances?" asked General Beaver. "As to the ambu- lances, said General Shafter, T take the whole responsibility myself. I ordered and supervised their loading. After events proved that it would have been better to take ten or fifteen additional ambulances and left that many wagons behind. But wagons can be used for two purposes and .ambulances can be used for but one. took the wagons and the wounded had to be transported in them after the first days fighting. must say that on a rocky, muddy road, such as we had there, there is little difference in comfort between an ambulance and an escort wagon. The men were put on straw in the bottom of the wagons and we did the best we could for them. Ambulances would have been better, but then hindsight is always better than foresight"
 An interesting incident of the landing was brought out by General Shafter, who said he had arranged with the Cu- ban general, Castillo, the day previous to the landing, to have 1000 men back of Baiquiri to catch the Spaniards when they were shelled out by the navy. Castillo was three hours late, however, and all the Spaniards got away. How about getting supplies to the front for the men?" asked General Beaver. Tt was the one problem of the campaign and it taxed us to the utmost" said he. "If it had not been for the pack train, we could not have done it and the expedition would have been a fail- ure." General Shafter said he regarded the landing as eminently successful, They lost only two men and thirty anil mals out of a total of 10000 men. It was a remarkable record.
 Asked if he thought that his own sick ness had any effect on the Cuba cam paign, he said: 'No, most decidedly. The campaign was carried out as plan-t ned from the start, and my health or sickness did not alter a single plan. T knew I was going to have sick army on my hands in the country pretty soon and I simply rushed matters to an issue as soon as possible. For myself I was not seriously sick. It is true that had the gout so bad I had to wrap my feet up in gunnery sack and could not get into a stirrup, and so had to have built platform from which to get on my horse. But certainly had not ex- pected to be subjected to personal crit icism for this. It was a military un- certainty"