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,