Ittitr to tlir
THE BARRACK AND THE HOSPITAL.
Six.--I am a weekly reader of the Spectator, and as such your article of last week, " The Soldier—His Hospital," came under my notice. I will not discuss it further than to allude to your remarks " that the barrack is in itself disgusting and deterring," and that "in the hospital there is often little zeal and no affection" ; both of which are in my opinion generally incorrect,. and such, that if you had the means of making .yourself ac- quainted with the reality, you would much regret ever having put into print. It is easy in all cases to make what is called a good story out of anything; and in this way I think that the blots in our barrack and hos. pital systems—and that they are great I do not wish for a moment to dis- pute—have been magnified and distorted to meet a popular cry. If you were to visit a well-regulated barrack, such as most barracks are, you would find that instead of being in itself disgusting and deterring," it was extremely clean and tidy, and, compared with the abodes of the great majority of the soldiers previous to their enlistment, extremely inviting. You would find that in most regiments the tubs are never introduced into the sleeping-rooms, but are kept on the landings of the stairs during the night, and out of doors and filled with water during the day. You wodld find the single men sleeping in rooms bytheniselves, and the married people with their families living in rooms where no single men are allowed. It is certainly very bad to herd men, women, and children together, but even so every practicable attention is paid to cleanliness; and as long as twopence per night is the lodging-money allowed to married men living out of bar- racks, you can hardly wonder that the ill-paid soldier encumbered with a wife and family should prefer remaining in barracks to living in the lodg- ings that so scanty a pittance will procure. Again you say, that " in the hospital where there is often no zeal and but little affection, the details are so hideous as to be literally unfit for pub- lication." I cannot follow you into this exaggeration further than to say, that a long experience of the service in comfort and hardship, in good cli- mates,and in bad, has shown me that the medical officers of the Army are wanting neither in zeal in their duties nor in affection towards their men, and that I am sure the same may be said of the combatant officers, of which facts the British soldier himself will be your best informant.
I remain, Sir, your obedient servant, C. 0.
[Our "informant " was " the British soldier" ; for although, in seeking information for the series of articles which we have been giving we did not limit ourselves to any one source, yet all the statements which we have made establishing " blots in the barrack and hospital systems," have been drawn from the blue-book on the sanitary condition of the British Army, and from the evidence of military officers, non-commissioned officers, and medical officers—the witnesses being of all ranks in the service. The allusions to the barrack which we made in our paper of last week would be perfectly intelligible if our correspondent would refer to the introductory paper of the series, and to the paper specifically on the subject of the bar- rack ; and if he will take the trouble to look into the blue-book he will find a literal verification of our statement, that many of the details which would have rendered the case much stronger, have been left out because actually "unfit for publication." Ourprinciple of selection has been this : we have said enough to induce those who doubt to examine the official volume for themselves; meanwhile we have given a general idea of the facts which it discloses ; and the abuses which we pointed out are of such a kind that their cure would certainly remove also the worst abuses. We are quite aware that both civilians and officers have already effected very considerable improvements ; but our correspondent is mistaken if he supposes that the progress of improvement is uniform. In some -regiments, for example, `the the tubs" are net put outside the sleeping-rooms at night, and from the nature of other arrangements, they are exposed to abuses which he will find described in the blue-book. We know that there has always been a great difference in the ecbnomy of different regiments. There have been traditional abuses in one, which have been unknown in another; and we are happy to know that our correspondent's regiment is one of those of which a good report may be made. We will, however, only beg him to be assured that we have no other object in view whatever than the advantage of the country through the welfare of the service. If in reference to the feelings of officers we have been led into the use of expressions too strong or too general, we gladly avow our belief that the best feelings of Englishmen and gentlemen are to be found both in barrack and hospital.—En.]
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