When one compares the conditions under which the Spanish American War
was fought with those of the Great War, he feels himself living in a
different age. Twenty years ago hysteria and sudden panics swept the
nation. Cheers and waving handkerchiefs and laughing girls sped the
troops on their way. It cannot be denied that the most popular song
of the war time was "There'll be a hot time in the old town to-night,"
though it may be believed that the energy and swing of the music rather
than the words made it so. The atmosphere of the country was one of
a great national picnic where each one was expected to carry his own
lunch. There was apparent none of the concentration of effort and of the
calm foresight so necessary for efficiency in modern warfare. For youth
the Spanish American War was a great adventure; for the nation it was a
diversion sanctioned by a high purpose.
This abandon was doubtless in part due to a comfortable consciousness
of the vast disparity in resources between Spain and the United States,
which, it was supposed, meant automatically a corresponding difference
in fighting strength. The United States did, indeed, have vast
superiorities which rendered unnecessary any worry over many of the
essentials which gripped the popular mind during the Great War. People
believed that the country could supply the munitions needed, and that
of facilities for transport it had enough. If the United States did not
have at hand exactly the munitions needed, if the transportation
system had not been built to launch an army into Cuba, it was
popularly supposed that the wealth of the country rendered such trifles
negligible, and that, if insufficient attention had been given to the
study of such matters in the past, American ingenuity would quickly
offset the lack of skilled military experience. The fact that
American soldiers traveled in sleeping cars while European armies
were transported in freight cars blinded Americans for a while to the
significant fact that there was but a single track leading to Tampa, the
principal point of embarkation for Cuba; and no one thought of building
another.
Nothing so strongly marks the amateur character of the conduct of the
Spanish War as the activity of the American press. The navy was dogged
by press dispatch boats which revealed its every move. When Admiral
Sampson started upon his cruise to San Juan, he requested the
press boats to observe secrecy, and Admiral Chadwick comments with
satisfaction upon the fact that this request was observed "fully and
honorably... by every person except one." When Lieutenant Whitney risked
his life as a spy in order to investigate conditions in Porto Rico; his
plans and purpose were blazoned in the press. Incredible as it may now
seem, the newspaper men appear to have felt themselves part of the army.
They offered their services as equals, and William Randolph Hearst even
ordered one of his staff to sink a vessel in the Suez Canal to delay
Camara on his expedition against Dewey. This order, fortunately for the
international reputation of the United States, was not executed. With
all their blare and childish enthusiasm, the reporters do not seem to
have been so successful in revealing to Americans the plans of Spain as
they were in furnishing her with itemized accounts of all the doings of
the American forces.
While the press not only revealed but formulated courses of action in
the case of the army, the navy, at least, was able to follow its own
plans. For this difference there were several causes, chief of which was
the fact that the navy was a fully professional arm, ready for action
both in equipment and in plans, and able to take a prompt initiative
in carrying out an aggressive campaign. The War Department had a more
difficult task in adjusting itself to the new conditions brought about
by the Spanish American War. The army was made up on the principle
traditionally held in the United States that the available army force in
time of peace should be just sufficient for the purposes of peace, and
that it should be enlarged in time of war. To allow a fair amount of
expansion without too much disturbance to the organization in increasing
to war strength, the regular army was over-officered in peace times. The
chief reliance in war was placed upon the militia. The organization
and training of this force was left, however, under a few very general
directions, to the various States. As a result, its quality varied and
it was nowhere highly efficient in the military sense. Some regiments,
it is true, were impressive on parade, but almost none of the officers
knew anything of actual modern warfare. There had been no preliminary
sifting of ability in the army, and it was only as experience gave
the test that the capable and informed were called into positions of
importance. In fact, the training of the regular officers was inferior
to that of the naval officers. West Point and Annapolis were both
excellent in the quality of their instruction, but what they offered
amounted only to a college course, and in the army there was no
provision for systematic graduate study corresponding to the Naval War
College at Newport.
These difficulties and deficiencies, however, cannot fully explain
the woeful inferiority of the army to the navy in preparedness.
Fundamentally the defect was at the top. Russell A. Alger, the Secretary
of War, was a veteran of the Civil War and a silver-voiced orator,
but his book on the "Spanish-American War," which was intended as
a vindication of his record, proves that even eighteen months of as
grueling denunciation as any American official has ever received could
not enlighten him as to what were the functions of his office. Nor did
he correct or supplement his own incompetence by seeking professional
advice. There existed no general staff, and it did not occur to him, as
it did to Secretary Long, to create one to advise him unofficially. He
was on bad terms with Major General Nelson A. Miles, who was the general
in command. He discussed even the details of questions of army strategy,
not only with Miles but with the President and members of the Cabinet.
One of the most extraordinary decisions made during his tenure of office
was that the act of the 9th of March, appropriating $50,000,000 "for
national defense," forbade money to be spent or even contracts to be
made by the quartermaster, the commissary, or the surgeon general. In
his book Secretary Alger records with pride the fact that all this money
was spent for coast defense. In view of the fact that the navy did its
task, this expenditure was absolutely unnecessary and served merely to
solace coast cities and munition makers.
The regular army on April 1, 1898, consisted of 28,183 officers and men.
An act of the 26th of April authorized its increase to about double that
size. As enlistment was fairly prompt, by August the army consisted
of 56,365 officers and men, the number of officers being but slightly
increased. It was decided not to use the militia as it was then
organized, but to rely for numbers as usual chiefly upon a volunteer
army, authorized by the Act of the 22d of April, and by subsequent acts
raised to a total of 200,000, with an additional 3000 cavalry, 3500
engineers, and 10,000 "immunes," or men supposed not to be liable to
tropical diseases. The war seemed equally popular all over the country,
and the million who offered themselves for service were sufficient to
allow due consideration for equitable state quotas and for physical
fitness. There were also sufficient Krag-Jorgensen rifles to arm the
increased regular army and Springfields for the volunteers.
To provide an adequate number of officers for the volunteer army was
more difficult. Even though a considerable number were transferred
from the regular to the volunteer army, they constituted only a small
proportion of the whole number necessary. Some few of those appointed
were graduates of West Point, and more had been in the militia. The
great majority, however, had purely amateur experience, and many not
even so much. Those who did know something, moreover, did not have the
same knowledge or experience. This raw material was given no officer
training whatsoever but was turned directly to the task of training the
rank and file. Nor were the appointments of new officers confined to the
lower ranks. The country, still mindful of its earlier wars, was charmed
with the sentimental elevation of confederate generals to the rank of
major general in the new army, though a public better informed would
hardly have welcomed for service in the tropics the selection of men old
enough to be generals in 1865 and then for thirty-three years without
military experience in an age of great development in the methods of
warfare. The other commanding officers were as old and were mostly
chosen by seniority in a service retiring at sixty-four. The unwonted
strain of active service naturally proved too great. At the most
critical moment of the campaign in Cuba, the commanding general, William
R. Shafter, had eaten nothing for four days, and his plucky second in
command, the wiry Georgian cavalry leader of 1864 and 1865, General
"Joe" Wheeler, was not physically fit to succeed him. There is not the
least doubt that the fighting spirit of the men was strong and did not
fail, but the defect in those branches of knowledge which are required
to keep an army fit to fight is equally certain. The primary cause for
the melting of the American army by disease must be acknowledged to be
the insufficient training of the officers.
This hit or miss method, however, had its compensations, for it brought
about some appointments of unusual merit. Conspicuous 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 prepared to move. On the 7th
of June he was ordered to sail with "not less than 10,000 men," but an
alarming, though unfounded, rumor of a Spanish squadron off the north
coast of Cuba delayed the expedition until the 14th. With an army
of seventeen thousand on thirty-two transports, and accompanied by
eighty-nine newspaper correspondents, Shafter arrived on the 20th of
June off Santiago.
The Spanish troops in Cuba--the American control of the sea made it
unnecessary to consider those available in Spain--amounted, according to
returns in April, 1898, to 196,820. This formidable number, however,
was not available at any one strategic spot owing to the difficulty of
transporting either troops or supplies, particularly at the eastern end
of the island, in the neighborhood of Santiago. It was estimated that
the number of men of use about Santiago was about 12,000, with 5000
approaching to assist. Perhaps 3000 insurgents were at hand under
General Garcia. The number sent, then, was not inadequate to the task.
Equal numbers are not, indeed, ordinarily considered sufficient for an
offensive campaign against fortifications, but the American commanders
counted upon a difference in morale between the two armies, which was
justified by results. Besides the American Army could be reinforced as
necessity arose.