“I cannot tell you. The words stumble in my 187 throat, and my heart burns and bleeds. Here is the London Times! Read aloud from it what William Howard Russell has witnessed––I cannot read the words––I would be using my own words––listen, Rahal! Listen, Thora! and oh, may God enter into judgment at once with the men responsible for the misery that Russell tells us of.”
At this point, Adam Vedder entered the room. He was in a passion that was relieving itself by a torrent of low voiced curses––curses only just audible but intensely thrilling in their half-whispered tones of passion. In the hall he had taken off his hat but on entering the room he found it too warm for his top-coat, and he began to remove it, muttering to himself while so doing. There was an effort to hear what he was saying but very quickly Ragnor stopped the monologue by calling:
“Adam! Thee! Thou art the one wanted. Ian is just going to read what the London Times says of this dreadful mismanagement.”
“‘Mismanagement!’ Is that what thou calls the crime? Go on, Ian! More light on this subject is wanted here.”
So Ian stood up and read from the Times’ correspondent’s letter the following sentences:
“The skies are black as ink, the wind is howling over the staggering tents, the water is sometimes a foot deep, our men have neither warm nor waterproof clothing and we are twelve hours at a time in the trenches––and not a soul seems to care for their comfort or even their lives; the most wretched beggar who wanders about the streets of London in the rain leads the life of a prince compared with the British soldiers now fighting out here for their country.
... “The commonest accessories of a hospital are wanting; there is not the least attention paid to decency or cleanliness, the stench is appalling, the fetid air can barely struggle out through chinks in the walls and roofs, and for all I can observe the men die without the least effort being made to save them. They lie just as they were let down on the ground by the poor fellows, their comrades, who brought them on their backs from the camp with the greatest tenderness but who are not allowed to remain with them. The sick appear to be tended by the sick, and the dying by the dying. There are no nurses––and men are literally dying hourly, because the medical staff of the British army has forgotten that old rags of linen are necessary for the dressing of wounds.”
“My God!” cried Ian, as he let the paper fall from the hands he clasped passionately together, “My God! How can Thou permit this?”
“Well, then, young man,” said Adam, “thou must remember that God permits what He does not will. And Conall,” he continued, “millions 189 have been voted and spent for war and hospital materials, where are the goods?”
“The captain of the packet told me no one could get their hands on them. Some are in the holds of vessels and other things so piled on the top of them that they cannot be got at till the hold is regularly emptied. Some are stored in warehouses which no one has authority to open––some are actually rotting on the open wharves, because the precise order to remove them to the hospital cannot be found. The surgeons have no bandages, the doctors no medicine, and as I said there are no nurses but a few rough military orderlies. The situation paralyses those who see it!”