Scores of men who are to-day rotting
in Cuban graves died of nostalgia, and might have lived if they had
received the letters from home which were sent to them.
CHAPTER XI.
THE CAUSE.
The causes of these conditions are not far to seek. The United States
has not had an army since 1866. There has been no such a thing as a
brigade, a division, or a corps. There has been no opportunity to
study and practice on a large scale, in a practical way, the problems
of organization and supply. The Army has been administered as a unit,
and the usual routine of business gradually became such that not a
wheel could be turned nor a nail driven in any of the supply
departments without express permission, previously obtained from the
bureau chief in Washington. The same remarks apply equally to all the
other staff departments. The administration had become a bureaucracy
because the whole Army for thirty years had been administered as one
body, without the subdivisions into organizations which are inevitable
in war-time and in larger bodies.
War became a reality with great suddenness. Those who have grown gray
in the service, and whose capacity, honesty, and industry had never
been and can not be impeached, found themselves confronted with the
problem of handling nearly three hundred thousand men, without
authority to change the system of supply and transportation.
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