us were those of
Colonel Leonard Wood and Lieutenant Colonel Theodore Roosevelt. The
latter had resigned as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, a position
in which he had contributed a great deal to the efficiency of that
Department, in order to take a more tangible part in the war. After
raising among his friends and the cowboys of the West a regiment
of "Rough Riders," he declined its command on plea of military
inexperience. Roosevelt made one of those happy choices which are a mark
of his administrative ability in selecting as colonel Leonard Wood, an
army surgeon whose quality he knew through common experiences in the
West.

To send into a midsummer tropical jungle an American army, untrained
to take care of its health, for the most part clothed in the regulation
army woolens, and tumbled together in two months, was an undertaking
which-could be justified only on the ground that the national safety
demanded immediate action. In 1898, however, it seemed to be universally
taken for granted by people and administration, by professional soldier
as well as by public sentiment, that the army must invade Cuba without
regard to its fitness for such active service. The responsibility for
this decision must rest upon the nation. The experience of centuries
had proved conspicuously that climate was the strongest defense of the
Caribbean islands against invasion, and it was in large measure the
very sacrifice of so many American soldiers that induced the study of
tropical diseases. In 1898 it could hardly be expected that the American
command, inexperienced and eager for action, should have recognized the
mosquito as the carrier of yellow fever and the real enemy, or should
have realized the necessity of protecting the soldiers by inoculation
against typhoid fever.

Fixed as was the determination to send an army into Cuba at the earliest
possible moment, there had been a wide diversity of opinion as to what
should be the particular objective. General Miles wavered between the
choice of the island of Porto Rico and Puerto Principe, a city in
the interior and somewhat east of the middle of Cuba; the Department
hesitated between Tunas on the south coast of Cuba, within touch of the
insurgents, and Mariel on the north, the seizure of which would be the
first step in a siege of Havana. The situation at Santiago, however,
made that city the logical objective of the troops, and on the 31st of
May, General Shafter was ordered to be pre