The Irish standard. [volume] (Minneapolis, Minn. ;) 1886-1920, 1904-10-15
lessons FROM WAR
INTHE FAR EAST
MAI. SEAMAN ADDRESSES CON-
GREsS OF MILITARY SUR
GEoNS AT ST. LOUIS.
PRAISES TREATMENT
OF WOUNDED JAPANESE
Compares Vice Among Cars Troops
Before Outbreak of War to Con-
ditions in Sodom and Gomorrah-
American Government Scored.

koI AOulS, OCL. lo.-1uo eutlCo IulTQ
days session OF the International con-
gress Of military surgeons Wednesday
was devoted to the presentation of pa
pers and addresses. The first address
was by Maj. Louis Livingston Seaman,
of the United States army, who has just
returned from the scene OF the Russo
Japanese war. Maj. Seaman visited in
turn all the naval and military hospitals
in Japan and the Russian wounded and
prisoners at Matsayama, where the pris-
oners, 1000 in number, were being ''en-
tertained,' as Maj. Seaman put it. The
men, he said, were being literally fed
with fish, white bread, ,ruit and many
delicacies. Several Of them, he said,
declared they hoped to be left in Japan.
Maj. Seaman pointed out the small
percentage of deaths from wounds
among the Japanese and said that from
the testimony of those conversant with
the facts, supplemented by his own OBJ
servation, the loss from preventable
disease in the conflict will be only q
fraction of one per cent. T.
Vice in Russian Cities.
In contrast to this condition of pre-
paredness, Maj. Seaman described the
conditions which he said existed in the
Russian service in Manchuria prior to
the outbreak of the war. ARRIVING
trains" he declared, chat should have
been crowded with men and munitions
of war, brought each full complement
of the demimonde and vodka. Wine,
woman and song were certainly the I'M
doing of Russia, where beauty and a
bottle were the highest ambition of it's
officers, from general to corporal. Sodom
and Gomorrah-the current synonyms
of Port Arthur and Vladivostok in the
Orient-Were temples of virtue in COM
parison to the debauchery, .licentious-
ness, fragrant immoralities and openly
Haunted vice recently practiced in those
unhappy cities"
Scores American Appointments.
Touching the lessons to be learned
from the Japanese war, Maj. Seaman
said: ''The Japanese authorities per-
mitted our government to send five mil
atary attaches to accompany their army
in the field. Was surgeon or quar-
termaster or commissary officer de-
tailed? No. They represented the life
saving and life-preserving departments
and were omitted. The killing depart
ments got the appointments, and to-day
Japanese officers are laughing in their
sleeves at our senseless failure to have
representatives on what they consider
their three vital points. whilst the only
weak, almost burlesQue feature of their
army, its cavalry, is considered of sufi-
cient Importance to be worthy of spe-
cial study.
Lessons Of Spanish War Useless.
But what can be expected of gov
eminent that after such terrible lessons
of 1898-99 still insists-especially in the
tropics-of subsisting its army on a
ration so rich and elastic that when in
the emergency of war it's elasticity is
tested it bursts its bands, and is found
toconsist of pork and beans and ferment.
ing canned rubbish that in six weeks
prostrates so per cent. of it's $50, 900 units
with intestinal diseases and sends 5000
to their last homes, to say nothing of
the enormous number invalided and the
$4,000 pension claims?"
Favors Post Canteen.
Maj. Seaman assaulted congress for
abolishing the post canteen and said it
was time for this association of military
and naval surgeons to demand another
reorganization of the army which would
afford the medical branch equal recog-
milton with other branches of the serv-
ice.