Page:Urge Location of Army Recuperation Camp in Colorado.pdf/5



Denver, September 6, 1917.

To His Excellency, Governor Julius C. Gunter:

As an officer in the service of my country for more than fifty years, I believe that I am more intimately informed as to the needs of our Army than the great majority of our people, and that it is not only my right, but my duty, to urge the consideration of those needs upon your Excellency and the authorities at Washington.

For many years I have recommended the establishment of Supply Depots, large Military Posts, Hospital and Recuperation Camp on the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains, where new levies for the active armies could and would become perfect in physical condition to meet the rigorous requirements incident thereto and where men disabled in the service of their country might be sent for that care and attention which would quickest restore them to a normal condition of health and strength.

The effort of the committee appointed by your Excellency and the Civic and Commercial Association to secure the location of such a camp here in Denver, therefore, meets with my heartiest approval. Such a camp would be of inestimable benefit, not only to our Army, but to the armies of our Allies. The deplorable condition of the men who have been infected by tuberculosis alone in the French Army serves ample warning as to the dangers which confront our own men—dangers which we are peculiarly fitted to cope with here in Colorado. In the New York Sun of September 2nd, a dispatch from Paris says:

The establishment of such a sanatorium here in this altitude and in this unrivaled climate, to which such men might be invalided, would mean the restoration to the service of thousands of fine young men who otherwise must be lost, not only to the Army, but as useful factors in civil life.