It is not a pleasant subject. It does not force itself into a book upon "the brighter side of war" by reason of any especial harmony with that title. But it suggests a story which England needs to know—which England must wish to know if she means to keep her place among the fighting powers by the only means by which that status can be maintained—which is the stopping of every source of weakness and the reform of every evil in her army. As I said when I was urged to testify before the Commission which inquired into the subject, I did not study the matter when I was with the army. I was conscious of the general belief that the hospital service did not meet the demands of the situation either after the awful losses at Paardeberg, or, later, when enteric claimed between 5,000 and 7,000 victims at Bloemfontein.

Death was thick in the air. Nearly every correspondent and officer counted more friends who were sick than he had known to be wounded or killed in battle. The rains had set in. The veldt was like a marsh. The nights were bitterly cold. The dead in their blankets pursued us in the streets of the town and on every ride we took upon the veldt. My concern for my son took me daily to the Volks Hospital, where the doctor and nurses said that enteric in Bloemfontein took on so mild a form that they should "consider it a lasting disgrace to have a patient die of that disease," and yet every time I went to that hospital I heard from other visitors how many were the deaths in the army hospitals. I heard, too, how bad were the sanitary arrangements, how inefficient were the often untrained "Tommy" nurses, how dreadful were the risks the patients were obliged to take (in some field hospitals) in obeying the commands of nature.

Now that I have returned to England I have had a high official of the Medical Corps say to me, "It was known beforehand that the service must break down in war because it was undermanned; it was never made familiar with its work, it had too few reserves to draw upon; when it was distended by the sudden and extraordinary demands of war it had to grow on paper, but not in fit and proper personnel or materiel."

Here, then, is the basis for what must, sooner or later, be exposed to all the nation. Knowing that things were amiss, and that they could not have been otherwise, the people need not wait two or five years for all the facts, or for the creation of a mis-applied "sensation." Let them doggedly and firmly insist that the loudly promised reform of the army shall be certain to include the establishment of a properly trained, equipped, and proportioned R.A.M.C., and that the lingering prejudice of the regular army officer against this most useful, economic, and essential corps shall vanish before the will of the people as stubble is swept up by a prairie fire.

Mr. Gwynne wrote the obituary notice of Archibald Forbes, Mr. Fred W. Unger wrote a descriptive article called "The Inexpressible Veldt," and we were rejoiced once again to publish a contribution in verse by Mr. A. B. Paterson, of Sydney.

THE FRIEND.
(Edited by the War Correspondents with Lord Roberts' Force.)

No. 18.]

[Price One Penny

BLOEMFONTEIN, FRIDAY, APRIL 6, 1900