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.