The New York Times/1918/01/27/General Gorgas Unheeded

GENERAL GORGAS UNHEEDED.

In his testimony before the Senate Military Affairs Committee, Surgeon Gen. Gorgas was, as a man of his profession and fame should be, a thoughtful, deliberate, and responsible witness. At the same time, he had the courage of his convictions, which is characteristic of him. No man of his attainments had previously spoken, through the Senate committee, to the American people about the management of the army by the War Department since the United States entered the world conflict.

If General Gorgas could have commended the hygienic conditions and the hospital facilities of the camps and cantonments, or even found excuses, (not reasons,) for omissions and shortcomings, he would have done so with great satisfaction. He is not a destructive critic, and as a scientist he is farseeing and fair-minded. General Gorgas, weighing his words and calculating their effect upon his standing and reputation, was compelled by a high sense of duty to make statements that reflected upon the efficiency of his superior, the Secretary of War. There is no escape from that conclusion. Take this excerpt from the report of the inquiry:

Senator Hitchcock—When was the work on the hospitals commenced?

General Gorgas—In general, the cantonments have been pretty well completed before the hospitals were commenced.

Senator Hitchcock—Was that in accordance with your advice?

General Gorgas—No, Sir; I thought just the contrary, that the hospitals ought to have been commenced and completed first.

It seems astonishing, in fact inexplicable, that the advice of the surgeon who combated and by scientific discoveries triumphed over yellow fever at Havana, and who made the Panama Zone a sanatorium for the canal builders, should have been disregarded. The result was an unnecessary increase in the death rate of soldiers committed to makeshifts of hospitals without heat, proper equipment, and trained attendants. It is a shameful argument that, after all, the death rate per thousand was not high. It proves nothing but indecent partisanship. Can there be a doubt that if the cantonments had to be built over again the construction of hospitals would not have kept pace with them?

But the waste of life, which was so unnecessary and is such a reproach to the War Department, had another salient cause than the lack of adequate hospital facilities, and that was overcrowding in the camps. General Gorgas urged as the minimum of floor space forty-five square feet—his preference was sixty feet as a sanitary precaution. "We were endeavoring," he told the committee to account for the compromise, "to meet the questions of expenses and the feasibility in various ways."

What happened? When General Gorgas made his inspections he found nine men crowded into floor spaces large enough for five only. He had heard that as many as twelve men were compressed into space intended for five. Such was the condition last September at Camp Bowie, according to the testimony of General Greble, the commander who called for sufficient clothing for his men and waited an unconscionable time for it. The overcrowded camps became breeding places for epidemics, concerning which General Gorgas said: "The amount of measles caused the death rate, or rather the pneumonia following the measles." And there was so little excuse for the higher rate, because "the camp sites were well selected" and "the sanitary conditions were in general good."

The War Department way of dealing with such disclosures as General Gorgas has made is to plead the size of the task that had to be performed, to boast of what has been done, as if it should silence criticism, and to promise that by a certain date there will be nothing to complain of, absolutely nothing. Nevertheless, Secretary Baker stands convicted by evidence, collected from many sources, and chiefly from his subordinates, of ill-considered, precipitate judgment, of failure to plan on a large scale and to grasp details, of incompetent direction of agents, of confusion in execution, of mistaking helter-skelter hustling for achievement, of having little understanding of co-ordination, and of being satisfied to accept information without verifying it.

That Secretary Baker has learned more than one lesson and is improving as manager of the War Department will be cheerfully admitted by his critics, but it may be a long war, and, whatever its duration, difficult problems will accumulate to try Mr. Baker's acumen and to test his temperamental fitness for his exacting task. Judging from what now appears in the record of performance, what reason is there to believe that he will make the best Secretary of War obtainable, that, at any rate, if his commission is indefinitely continued he will not pile Ossa on Pelion?