Show AN UNBIDEN WITNESS Army Beef Board Rejects Some Interesting In-teresting Testimony + EMBALMED BEEF STORY INTENDED FOR PORTO mqo BUT W ± NTo 3ACKSONVILLE t Cook In Colonel Brs gient Said the Men sick Sad It lla de All Wites Not Permitted t Testify Because the oar Did Not HCae Beef ror Cba l Washington Marh 4The war ae artment court of Inquiry wound up Its weeks work with a half days se sion today havIng exhausted its list of lnesses now 01 had There maybe may-be some witnesses at the Monday session ses-sion but the court will start for Chicago Chi-cago early next week probably on Tuesday of ednesday Just before the close of the session today a volunteer witness resented himself but was not accented He himselt his wore an army uniform and said name was Frank Rundas late of the Third Nebraska Colonel W J Bryans regiment and that he had recently been honorably discharged rom the service and was on his way home His story was in brief that he had served in the company kitchen with his command com-mand in Jacksonville and that during livIng a long perIod when the men were Ing on refrIgerator beef there was so much internal trouble RmOn the men that the Issue of this was stopped At onoth time he got hold of sOme refrigerator re-frigerator meat In the kitchen that was of such a peculiar color that the aten ton of the company olcer was called in charge examined to i The surgeon camined i so Rundas alleged and remarked that the meat wa all right but hd been prepared to send to Porto PJo and since it had been issued the men had a well use It The meat was cooked but all the men who ate It were made sick The Inference Infer-ence drawn was that this was some or the game Porto Rico beef that Dr Daly had analyzed and alleged to be cherni cly treated Rundas said he was on his way home but had stooped on in Washington to offer this Information to the court of inquiry i It thought It worth hearing He presented himself to Colonel Dais the recorder of the court but was told that he would not be wanted as a witness On being asked soon afterward whether Rundas was to be called or why he had been rejected Colonel DavIs sad I know nothing about the man He has on a uniform but that is no proof that he Is a soldier or ever has been There are all sorts of cranks and imposters who come up here and want to testify As to this man If he can Identify himself and the court directs di-rects me to cal him I will do so The counsel for General Miles will inquire Into the antecedents ot this man and If he appears tQ be whatne represents he will be called CANNED BEEF FOR CUBANS Colonel Gallagher who was recalled In answer to a qUestIon from Major Lee as to whether he had issued canned beef to the Cuban refugees because OUr soldiers would not eat I replied We Issued the canned beeL to the Cubans because they preferred that We were trrln our best to give everyone every-one what they most Dreferred Umph commented Major Lee Louis D Hunter of the Sixth Massachusetts Massa-chusetts and regimental commissary while in Porto Rico sad his experience with both the canned and refrigerator beef on the whole has been Quite satisfactory sat-isfactory Some of the canned beef was condemned but the percentage was smal There had been considerable native na-tive beef Issued at times but on one occasion the quantity had been cut down 01 the advice of the surgeon The men liked the native beef which wa wel flavored but very tough Lieutenant Lieuten-ant Hunter said the men ate a lae amount of native fruit and bananas raw or cooked became almost a stale article of food Probably 2 Dec cent of the sIckness was due to fruit Crossexamlied witness said the men did not use over 5 per cent of the canned beef aier reaching Porto Rico They traded the rest to the natIve storekeepers On the march he had seen mar men throw away the beef after making one meal out of the can cr else give it to the natives Witness ltd been made sick a he supposed by eating canned beef His general health was good Major George IV Ruthers of the commissary department who had supplied sup-plied the Seventh amy corps with refrigerated re-frIgerated beef while at Jacksonville sad he had never received a complaint The meat had been rigidly inspected and showed no evidence of cuts or punctures or anything else that might give rise t the suspicion tat It bad been chemically treated At Jackson yule he chad issued a general ciriular to the Seventh amy corps calling attention at-tention to the fact that beef or vegetables veg-etables furnished and not corning 10 spetllatons wer to 1e returned te the commissary otces Issuing theta even if the defect was not discovered untIl the food reached the company cam HAD RECEIVED COMPLAINTS Major Le took up the crosseamin ation and the fact that aton eeloped there I had at times been complaints ax to the i beef and that in one case 800 pounds I of beef had been condemned Wines i said he had three official complaints of the beef at Jacksonville II 1 understood you to say saidMa jor Lee that you had never had a Ingle complaint as to the refrigerator beef be corrected If I am wrong I would like to jl you are sir replied the wines What I said a that I had handled 100000 pdunds of refrigerator beef at Savannah without any complaint The complaints wee made at Jacksonville i Lieutenant Colonel Curtis Guild or I Boston who was attached to General Ftzhugh Lees staff a inspector gen 1 erf or the Seventh army corps said 1 In opening that he had already been i before the war Investigating commission I commis-sion and had made two very careful reports on the subject one by order of Inspector General Breckinrldge both of which were on file in the war depart mont He submitted to the court that I these reports being accurately compiled com-piled from official aa would be better bet-ter evIdence than he could give offhand hand handWe We will of course call for your of fcal report to the war department said Colonel Davis But he added very posItively your testimony before the war commission will of course not be available for us CONDEMNED CANNED BEEF Witness sad his experience at Jacksonville Jack-sonville had been very satisfactory He ha personally inspected many car finding very few sides of beef to the whole of which any exception could betaken be-taken Of the canned roast beef he ltd unofficially condemned 4200 pounds which had been transshipped from New Orleans before i was del ered to the army In Jacksonville He explained that a large shipment or canned ro t beef had arrived at Jack somme in very offensive condition He had picked out offensive smelling cases amounting to 420 pounds and called In the Jacksonville heath officer Who condemned It as a public nuisance thus giving him the rigltt to destroy it at once In the public crematory Armours agent who was on thc ground asked leave to telegraph his home office and qulct received word from his 1m that it would be v r glad to take back the wboIehipment and funsh good beef 1n Its plac This va done The beef had ben sent to New Orleans by Ihjor West the commissary but there t as no stamp or other means on the packages to tell by wha any officer the beef had been Inspected and accepted aC-cepted I wa stamped by the bureau of animal inausl Witness bad subsequently made inspections in-spections of Texas beef killed in Cuba in the pat few months reports on which are on file 1n the war department depart-ment He haInade chemical analyses and bacteriological eminatons of the cnn d toast b made in Cuba arid made person cQ1parlson between refrgeraor beef native Cuba cattle and Texas beef killed In Cuba whkch bad and had not been in cold srrae Ills experiments had been exhaustive and conducted a fairly a possible with reference to practical conditions His own opinion was that the best meat our troops could get in the West IndIes was American cattle killed and refrigerated il Cuba as near as possible pos-sible used tb the spot where I was to be usedHAD HAD A DEATHLY SMELL Quartermaster Sergeant Sullivan of the Ninth Massachusetts ha been through the Santiago campaign and came to the stand full of memories of the canned and refrigerator beef The former he sid the men barely taste The latter he strted In to describe asa as-a strange and gruesome article unlike anything he had ever seen He sad it had a deathly smell Here he col lled with the recorder who Insisted on having a strict definition of a deathly smell Winess got as fa as sayIng that the deathly smell was dIfferent from the smell of a decomposing body but here the recorder demanded a statement of the mechanlsm of decomposition and cl rd a lrr of the cases which would be eoled The witness thereupon went to pIeces and reduced the whole statement state-ment to saying that the beef was very bad and on this be refOsed to be se shaken The list of witness having been exhausted ex-hausted the court adjourned until 10 oclocl Monday |