The following letters were written by three distinguished visitors. Two Corps Orders are also attached.
"Shepheard's Hotel, Cairo,
"May 20, 1915."Dear Colonel Ramsay Smith,
"Allow me to congratulate you upon the admirable medical arrangements at Heliopolis, and upon the excellent hospital you have established there. One is at first disposed to say, 'How well the building adapts itself to a hospital!' until the true fact becomes revealed of the genius displayed in converting a decidedly refractory building into a place for the sick. You and your staff have done wonders and have once more shown that in the land of Egypt 'it is possible to make bricks without straw.'
"Australia may well be proud of the part she has played in this war, and I can pay no higher compliment than by saying that the medical arrangements of the Australian Army are as splendid as are the fighting qualities of its men.
"Above all I was impressed with the energy and enthusiasm with which the work at Heliopolis is being carried on, with the ingenuity and resource displayed at every turn, and with the thoroughness that was manifest in every department of the vast hospital.
"The generosity with which Australia has provided motor ambulances for the whole country and Red Cross stores for every one, British or French, who has been in want of same is beyond all words.
"I only hope that the people of Australia will come to know of the splendid manner in which their wounded have been cared for, and of the noble and generous work which the great colony has done under the banner of the Red Cross.
"Yours sincerely,
"(Signed) Frederick Treves."
"Turf Club, Cairo,
"June 21, 1915."Dear Colonel Ramsay Smith,
"I am just off to the Dardanelles, and then back to Cairo, but I felt that I must write and thank you for your kindness in sending me those excellent and interesting photographs, which I shall treasure, and the memory of the interesting day I spent with you at your wonderful hospital. I also thank you for your report and for the copy of Sir F. Treves's letter.
"You must feel proud of your work at Heliopolis, on which I heartily congratulate you. It is a monument of skill in administration and the surmounting of what would at first appear to be insurmountable difficulties.
"Hoping soon to see you again,
"Yours very sincerely,
"(Signed) A. W. Mayo-Robson."
"St. Mark's Buildings, Alexandria,
"June 5, 1915."Dear Major Barrett,
"I have been away at the front or I should have written to you sooner to thank you for the interesting visit which you enabled Sir Frederick Treves and myself to pay to your hospital and stores. I enclose an extract of a report which I made on May 25 to the Hon. Arthur Stanley, Chairman of the British Red Cross Society and Order of St. John in London.
"You may have noticed a minute published in the press with the approval of the G.O.C., Sir John Maxwell, in which it was laid down that all Red Cross work, except the Australian Red Cross work, should be under the control of the British Red Cross and Order of St. John. I hope you will not think that in drafting this minute in this way I wished to convey that we were not working in perfect harmony with your Red Cross, but I feel that we could hardly suggest to you that you should be in any way under our control. At the same time, I hope that when you either come here, or when I come back to Cairo, that we may have an opportunity of conferring together so that we may so co-ordinate as far as possible our mutual work.
"May I add that I went to the Dardanelles in a transport with over a thousand of your brave soldiers, many of whom were returning to the Peninsula after having already been wounded. It is impossible to speak too highly of their gallantry, and of the splendid spirit they displayed. I need not tell you that I heard of their fighting qualities at the front, since their heroic deeds in this campaign have already become a matter of history.
"Yours sincerely,
"(Signed) Courtauld Thomson,
"Chief Commissioner for British Red
Cross and Order of St. John, Malta,
Egypt, and Near East Commission."
[Copy]
Extract from a Report from Lieut.-Colonel Sir Courtauld Thomson, Chief Commissioner of the British Red Cross and Order of St. John, to the Hon. Arthur Stanley, dated May 25, 1915.
"A striking feature in Cairo is the remarkable work which is being done by the Australian Red Cross. They have not only two exceptionally large hospitals and the large convalescent home, but they supply the motor transport for the wounded for the whole of Egypt. They have also very large Red Cross stores which they have brought with them. With these articles they have been more than generous, and I am informed that they have given away to the hospitals for our own troops something like 75 per cent. of whatever they had."
Extract from Corps Orders, March 28, 1915
"Appreciation.—The D.M.S. Egypt, who visited the Hospital yesterday afternoon, has requested the Officer Commanding to convey to the officers, nurses, N.C.O.s, and men in the Hospital his appreciation of the work done and the thorough character of the organisation."
Extract from Corps Orders, May 1, 1915
"Appreciation.—The D.M.S. Egypt, Surgeon-General Ford, witnessed the detraining of the invalids who arrived here Wednesday evening. He asked Major Barrett to convey to the Officer Commanding his great appreciation of the excellence of the arrangements and the efficient and quiet manner in which the work was done.
"He congratulates officers and men on the splendid work they are doing and requests that it shall be communicated to them in Corps Orders."
Looking back, does it not seem essential that these hospitals should have been formed, at all events in outline, in time of peace? That their commanding officers and essential staff should have been marked out beforehand, so that on the declaration of war the gaps could have been filled in from the reserve without difficulty? Satisfactory appointments are much less likely to be made in the turmoil which follows the declaration of war than in the atmosphere of deliberate calm which prevails in time of peace. Had such an arrangement prevailed, the First Australian General Hospital would certainly never have been recruited from three States distant from one another hundreds of miles.
Finally, Australian hospitals in time of war should either be regarded as responsible solely to the Australian military authorities and Government, or handed over without reserve to the R.A.M.C., and placed entirely under the control of the British authorities. Where two different authorities exist, as in the case of the First General Hospital, a large amount of trouble and delay is almost certain to ensue. The adoption of the latter course is in our judgment absolutely essential if efficiency is to be secured.
As is invariably the case, weaknesses in any system are only revealed by costly experience. But while in the Australian Medical Service the experience need not have been so costly, we can at least profit by what has occurred, and frame a stronger and a better policy for the future.