Chapter XLIII: Mort Pour La Patrie

If the French forces were to quit the Regency of Tunis to-morrow, the most melancholy, and at the same time, almost the sole memorial of its military occupation would be a series of little wayside cemeteries, in which lie the real victims of the latest Punic War. At the entrance of the summer palace of Kheir-ed-Din at the Goletta, under the shade of a Moslem _kouba_ near the Manouba road, in the silent plains around Ghardimaou, beneath the green palm-trees on the banks of the Gabes river, amidst the sandy coast of Jerba, and within the burying-ground of the Almoravides on the outskirts of holy Kairwan, groups of black wooden crosses and turf-covered mounds mark the resting-places of many hundreds of brave young soldiers, who left the smiling shores of France in all the joyousness of enthusiasm of a first campaign, only to find a grave in Africa.

If M. Roustan found his Nemesis in the Tribunal de la Seine, it was the great sanitary controversy which hopelessly wrecked the fame and fortune of his employers. The subject is beyond all doubt the saddest phase of the Tunisian question, but its consideration cannot be omitted in any impartial history of the campaign. If the untimely death of these two thousand striplings amidst strangers in a foreign land, teaches statesmen of all nations the danger of substituting duplicity for diplomacy, they will not indeed have died in vain.

In the last chapter I have told the story of M. Saint-Hilaire’s account in the witness-box of the origin of the Tunisian Expedition, but unfortunately for himself and his country, and above all for the “brave young troops,” he held very different language in the Chambers seven months before. The following was the ministerial programme of the 12th May:—

Military operations in Tunis will follow their regular course. A circle has been closely drawn round the insurgent tribes. _The sanitary condition of the troops is excellent, and testifies to the good working of the service_. The troops have given solid proofs of their military qualities, and if the enemy flies before them or submits, the honour must be given to the discipline and energy of the soldier as much as to the foresight of the commander. We are to-day permitted to hope that military operations will be shortly concluded, the phase of negotiations having now commenced. In entering Tunis we pursued the double object of chastising the rebellious tribes which had violated our frontier for ten years past, and of obtaining guarantees for the future. The present sacrifices of France, undergone for the purpose of securing her frontier, would not be sufficiently repaid by a seeming and precarious submission, or by speedily forgotten promises. Our safety requires durable pledges, and these we demand from the Bey of Tunis. We have no designs upon his territory or upon his throne. The Republic, in commencing the expedition, solemnly repudiated all idea of annexation or conquest, and it to-day renews the same declarations; but the Government of the Bey is bound to allow us to take in his territory, for the protection of our possessions, and to the extent which our interests demand, those measures of precaution which he is manifestly unable to take with his own unassisted force. Formal conventions will have to place our legitimate influence in the Regency beyond the reach of hostile designs or adventures. We trust that the Bey will himself recognise its necessity and advantage, and that we shall be able thus to terminate a difference which concerns France alone, which places French interests only at stake, and which France has the right to settle on her own account with the Bey in that spirit of justice, moderation, and scrupulous respect for European law which governs the policy of the French Republic.

It is in the essential difference between these two statements that we have to seek for the origin of the typhoid fever and dysentery which has deprived France of so many of her children. M. Saint-Hilaire deceived not only Lord Granville and Signor Cairoli,—he deceived France, he deceived the army, and he deceived himself. If he had said in April that he was going to “carry out the traditions of his predecessors” and send the French forces to practically conquer Tunis, a _corps d’armée_ would have been mobilised, a proper ambulance and hospital service organised, and care taken not to bring soldiers from infected stations. But he said nothing of the kind: all he spoke of then was “a military promenade of ten days—a fortnight at the most,” “a rapid march against the Khamírs and back into Algeria,” and “a week’s expedition for which no preparations were necessary.” The frontier was crossed with such ideas as these, and what were the consequences? To the entry into Khamír-land succeeded the capture of Kef; the fall of Kef was followed by the occupation of Bizerta; after Bizerta came the march to the Bardo; the sequel to the treaty of Kasr-es-Said was the bombardment of Sfax and the concentric movement on Kairwán. The “military promenade of ten days—a fortnight at the most,” became an expedition, and the expedition became an occupation, but no serious preparations were made either for one or the other—_hinc illæ lacrimæ_. This, however, is not all. M. Barthélémy Saint-Hilaire not only indulged in the utmost conceivable stretch of the elasticity of diplomatic language, but he adopted a baneful fiction and stuck to it. “Tunis,” said this Aristotelian politician, “is at peace with France; Muhamed es Sadek is our ally: there can be no war between us, and the soldiers of the Republic must act accordingly. The persons and property of Tunisians must under all circumstances be respected.” It was these considerations which prevented houses and other buildings from being taken for hospital purposes; it was the attempt to solve the riddle of “when is a war not a war?” which condemned hundreds of sick soldiers to lie and die under the scant shelter of portable tents that afforded no adequate protection against either sun or rain. In short, it was this unhappy conjunction of falsehood and fiction, which set the ball of epidemic sickness rolling; and when it once began to roll, no amount of subsequent care and attention could possibly stop it. Add to the primary causes, a large admixture of red-tapeism, a fair amount of jealousy of any interference from a Red Cross Society, and no fellow- feeling between the medical officers and the _Intendance_, and we have the secret of the mortality amongst the French troops in Tunis, which even the _Havas_ failed to explain, and official denials were powerless to conceal.

The three witnesses I propose to examine as to the merits of the sanitary controversy are, Dr. Lereboullet, M. Amadée Le Faure, and Dr. Samuel Pozzi. The first two have spoken at length elsewhere, although the voice of one of them is now silent for ever. The criticisms of Dr. Pozzi I heard from his own lips during the time we were fellow passengers on the “Valette” between Susa and Tripoli. May the wisdom of those three patriotic Frenchmen profit France in the future! Amadée Le Faure consecrated and intensified his words of warning by a death from fever caught while exploring the typhoid-stricken hospitals which rose as the natural consequence of M. Barthélémy Saint-Hilaire’s “military promenade of ten days—a fortnight at the most, which required no sort of preparations,” and for which beds, bedding, and medicines seemed to be considered wholly superfluous.

Early in October M. Lereboullet published his examination of the sanitary condition of the troops in Tunis in the _Gazette hebdomadaire de Médecine et de Chirurgie_. The _Télégraphe_ sent M. Amadée Le Faure, Deputy of La Creuse, to Tunis, for the purpose of verifying M. Lereboullet’s report. He did so, but at the cost of his life.

The following extracts from M. Lereboullet’s memoir sufficiently illustrate the immediate consequences of M. Saint-Hilaire’s inexplicable desire to deceive everybody:—

As far back as the 20th April, and even before we crossed the frontier, the bread actually ran short. Only a third of the normal rations could be distributed. Means of transport for the sick failed, and matters got worse when we came to the Khamír country. On the 28th April, after a day’s fighting, and a march through a district abounding in natural difficulties, there was nothing but biscuit to eat. On the 8th May the misery endured by the troops on the march is indescribable. A convoy was then sent in search of provisions. On the 12th it had not yet returned, and the meat supply failed. During the following days only the third of a ration of mouldy bread was served out. On the 18th bread was wanting during two days. The commissariat has shown itself to be incapable of supplying an army of 12,000 men, and at a distance of less than forty miles from the Algerian frontier. Not a potato or a drop of wine has been sent to us. The water is undrinkable, and there is no tea. Since the 20th April I have had no opium, or bismuth, or ipecacuanha, although cases of dysentery are of daily occurrence. The debility of the men is incredible.

This note was forwarded to M. Lereboullet by a regimental surgeon. A second report from Kef was attested by several officers and medical men:—

Since Kef was occupied a garrison of 1200 men has been stationed there. _During three months_ there was no ambulance there whatever. The officers opened a subscription amongst themselves to purchase medicines. Before they did this there were already three deaths and seventeen cases of fever. Subsequently an offer was made to reimburse the officers the money they had expended, but it was indignantly refused.

Here is another communication from an official source:—

When the Logerot column marched on Kef a serious resistance was expected. An hospital and a large provision depôt were accordingly organised on the frontier. On Kef falling without a blow, General Logerot descended rapidly the Medjerdah valley and occupied the railway line. The base of operations was consequently changed. Ghardimaou, the railway terminus, became the connecting link with the frontier and the natural centre both for revictualling and hospital purposes. We came on direct from Sidi Yusef to Ghardimaou. When we arrived there we were told that as General Logerot got his supplies from Tunis, it was thought useless to provision Ghardimaou. But all the sick belonging to the Logerot column were there. The forty-six sick or wounded were left to the care of one doctor, with only a few grammes of medicine and three days’ provisions. In this manner they waited for ten days. The sick had hardly anything to eat, were sleeping on a rug spread over the floor, and with no other remedy than cocoa. The solitary doctor found his store of medicines reduced to a packet of glycerine and some solution of morphine. For three wounded soldiers it was necessary to gather herbs, and make a rough kind of poultice.

M. Lereboullet continues:—

The orders for departure were given so suddenly to the battalions selected in France, and they were subsequently embarked with such rapidity, that no one ever thought of asking if such and such a regiment, coming from a locality where epidemic sickness was rife, was likely to spread the infection amongst the over-crowded barracks of Algeria. This is precisely what occurred. Typhoid fever was prevalent at Perpignan, and the disease broke out amongst the soldiers of the 142d Regiment. A battalion of that regiment was sent to Bone and brought the infection there.

The malady communicated itself to the 27th battalion of the _chasseurs- à-pied_, and soon assumed alarming proportions. It could not well be otherwise with hospitals crowded to overflowing, and no temporary hospitals yet erected. Even as late as the 10th September I received the following letter:—“We are here in a terrible plight from a sanitary point of view. It is positively inhuman to treat the sick as we are forced to do. A few beds and mattresses have just arrived. We have utilised them for the worst cases. The others are lying on the ground between two rugs or in litters. They are all dressed, without sheets, and are placed side by side. I have two basins for the use of eighty typhoid patients, and hardly any medicines. It is now three months that A—— has been garrisoned. Of 2500 men, 500 have gone into hospital, 300 are convalescent, 85 are dead, and 80 are still down with more or less severe typhoid fever. This is the sanitary condition at ——. It is the same thing everywhere.” Ten days later another of my colleagues wrote to me in a similar strain:—“I have 125 sick in my hospital. Nearly all of them are down with typhoid fever, and unfortunately of an aggravated form, for I have already lost twenty. It is like this all over the country. Medicines, comforts, and above all linen, are everywhere wanting. We cannot even attempt to put our poor typhoid patients on beds. If we only had a sufficient number of litters, or even some clean sheets and coverlids! But we have nothing of the kind. We are forced to leave the sick dressed and without sheets between two blankets. Any attempt to wash or disinfect them is out of the question, and we have been in the field already for six months!” A third writes:—“In three months I have treated 1200 sick, of which 80 died. In 78 of these cases the disease was typhoid fever. Like the rest of my colleagues I received orders to send to the Algerian hospitals all the sick who were not absolutely in a dying condition. How many of them will survive the journey performed while the disease is at its height?”

Now comes perhaps the gravest side of this sad story; another phase of the same policy of external and internal deception and duplicity:—

I am credibly informed (continues M. Lereboullet) that in order to avoid the sensation which the sending back to France of the sick belonging to the expeditionary corps would have occasioned, the Minister of War formally interdicted this very natural method of treating the invalids. From similar motives leave was even refused to convalescent medical men. In obedience to these orders the unfortunate typhoid patients were sent to the hospitals of Bone, Philippeville, &c. Proper means of transport did not exist. Then came the horrible spectacle of dying men being trotted about from one hospital to the other on the backs of mules. It often happened that in consequence of the total want of litters and coverlids, the doctors refused to sign the certificates for the removal of the patients, in order to avoid condemning them to a certain death. I know one who protested in this manner during three days. At last he got a formal order to let the patients start; they were placed on the backs of mules, and afterwards conveyed by rail to the different hospitals, where they nearly all arrived in a dying state. Several, I have reason to believe, died on the road. In this manner the removal from the tropical climate of Algeria, of men already worn out by fever and fatigue, has been prevented, the hospitals unprovided with medicines, and stores have been overcrowded, and typhoid patients have been left in the delirium of fever under canvas tents, in which the temperature sometimes reached 59 degrees centigrade. In the face of all this some people profess to be astonished at the complaints made by every army doctor and every officer, both against the Commissariat and the War Office.

M. Lereboullet thus concludes his able report:—

To-day, in spite of the ministerial circulars which enjoin official silence, some light at least has been thrown on the events which are passing in Africa. The administration is endeavouring to attenuate the responsibility of its agents, and measures which were scouted six months ago are now being adopted. A sanitary camp has been now formed at Porquerolles, and another will perhaps be organised at Hyères or elsewhere. These steps are doubtless due to such reports as those I have quoted. . . . With the removal of the sick to France, the erection of temporary hospitals, approved means of transport, and abundance of every conceivable kind of medical appliance, the evils I have denounced will assuredly disappear.

At the time I am writing (April 1882) the French hospital service leaves probably little to desire. This wholesome reformation at the eleventh hour cannot, however, with any show of reason, be pleaded as an excuse for gross mismanagement and crying abuses, which entailed a terrible and gratuitous loss of valuable lives, and which might easily have been avoided by the exercise of common sense and ordinary precautions on the part of General Farre, and common honesty and straightforwardness on the part of M. Barthélémy Saint-Hilaire. Public opinion has long since passed its judgment on both: M. Saint-Hilaire has returned to his cauliflowers and his Aristotle, while General Farre is represented in a popular cartoon as seated on a heap of skulls, and playing on the clarionet in the presence of the angel of death!

Nine short months before it was no other than General Farre who announced the coming expedition to the Chamber of Deputies in the following words:—

For three days past public opinion has been deeply moved by news from the Tunis frontier (applause). I will trace in few words from the official reports what has taken place. On March 30 the powerful tribe of Khamírs, which nominally belongs to the Regency, made an incursion into our territory, and attacked the Algerian tribes on the frontier. This incursion was repulsed, but on March 31, instead of coming 400 or 500 strong, they were far more numerous, and their aggression assumed a certain warlike importance. Two companies marched to succour the menaced tribes. The engagement lasted eleven hours. We had four killed and six wounded. The Algerian tribes who fought with us also suffered some loss. In presence of these events, which surpass any of the heretofore too frequent incursions, the Government has taken measures to prevent and repress such acts for the future (loud cheers). As soon as a sufficient force shall be concentrated we shall act against these robbers with all the vigour called for by the situation (prolonged applause).

Reproduction by Maclure & Macdonald.]

The speaker has now probably learned a bitter lesson as to the fickleness of public opinion, and the inexpediency of attempting to gain the laurels of war by “a military promenade of ten days, or a fortnight at the most.”

M. Baudoin, the principal medical officer in Tunis, had drawn up a report on the sanitary condition of the army, which was now published in order to allay, if possible, the impression created by Dr. Lereboullet’s disclosures, but it had no other effect than that of provoking a detailed and circumstantial rejoinder. It was under these circumstances that the talented and conscientious Amadée Le Faure came to see things for himself at Tunis. After his death his valuable letters from that country to the _Télégraphe_ were published in a collected form by M. L. Jezierski. In that dated the 18th October he first speaks of the result of his inquiries on the sanitary question. “At Jerba,” he writes, “the men are sleeping under small tents, and so are the sick. The heat has often reached 58 degrees centigrade. At one time everything was wanting;—water, medicines, provisions, and even tents. On the 20th June a demand was made for tents; they arrived on the 10th September. Up to that time the only shelter was esparto grass. The mortality was terrible. On the 10th October the deaths had reached 73 out of 800, with 90 still on the sick list, and _no hospital or ambulance_.” Although an order from the Minister of War prevented M. Le Faure from having any further access to the hospitals, he had already gathered enough statistics to enable him to bear out generally the assertions of M. Lereboullet, and on the 7th November he delivered in the French Chambers a speech in condemnation alike of the military and sanitary measures of General Farre. A fortnight later he died of typhoid fever contracted during his visits to the Tunis hospitals. His words, however, still lived. Nobody any longer doubted that the formation of the Tunisian expeditionary corps out of stray battalions had more or less disorganised the whole French army, and that the sanitary arrangements during the first six months of the war were as defective as they were inadequate.

It was the accident of my bringing the news of poor Le Faure’s sad end to Susa, which introduced me to my fellow-traveller Dr. Pozzi. Our conversation naturally enough first turned on Susa. “Here,” said Dr. Pozzi, “everything began with a sanitary blunder. The troops, instead of being distributed in different convenient places, were huddled together in the Kasbah, just as if the Arabs were going to assault the town. As we were at peace with the Bey of Tunis, no building could be taken for an hospital except an old grain store under the city walls, surrounded by the stagnant overflow of the neighbouring oil mills, and incapable of being ventilated. At most it could only contain fifty beds. The soldiers soon conceived a horror of this noisome den: they gave it the sobriquet of the _dépôtoire_, and concealed their sickness to avoid going to it. The crowding of 1200 men in the Kasbah soon _engendered_ typhoid fever; the _dépôtoire_ perpetuated it. Beds, dressers, &c., were wanting, but in a short time there were eighty sick soldiers in the grain store, and the cooking and medicine compounding had to go on in the midst of them. Later this was remedied, but the evil was already done.” Twelve deaths had taken place in a fortnight. From Susa Dr. Pozzi went on to speak of the question generally. In his opinion the excessive mortality amongst the French soldiers in Tunis has several distinct and palpable causes, viz., defect of transport, want of preparation owing to M. Saint- Hilaire’s first fiction of a military promenade, inability to obtain hospital accommodation on account of M. Saint-Hilaire’s second fiction of a Tunisian alliance, obstinate refusal to accept any Red Cross aid, and the almost total absence of villages and isolated houses for the use of the ambulance in the interior. “The large number of deaths at the Manouba hospital,” observed Dr. Pozzi, “are to be accounted for by its being selected as one of the principal places for the receipt of the sick from the interior, and by the means used to transport them thither. Many died _en route_ from the effects of travelling under a burning sun in an uncovered springless Maltese cart. It often happened that the patients were tied together to prevent them falling out, and a doctor told me that he had on one occasion _cut a living soldier from a companion who had been dead several hours_.” Dr. Pozzi considers Bizerta as an instance of the places in which typhoid fever was engendered by defective provisions, crowding, overfatigue, and too great weight of baggage. He thinks that the sanitary administration of the campaign falls into three epochs—April to August, inexcusably bad; September to November, improving; from November, good. Jerba, Gabes, and Fernána are, according to him, the scenes of the most fatal mistakes. As regards the first two localities, Dr. Pozzi’s information exactly confirms the details given by MM. Lereboullet and Le Faure. “Fernána,” he says, “was originally occupied in May, owing to a mistaken notion of its strategic importance. The camp was pitched on a long mound surmounted by a ruined _kouba_, and having a slight depression generally filled with water on its summit. The whole neighbourhood turned out to be insufferably damp, and typhoid fever soon broke out there. Nearly all the garrison passed through the ambulance, death after death occurred, but, in spite of General Japy’s adverse report, the post was obstinately maintained.” I afterwards met the medical officer in charge of Fernána, and obtained from him some valuable information, which I shall allude to further on.

Dr. Pozzi thinks the calamities at Gabes admit of no excuse. The effects of the unwholesome water could have been obviated by the use of _appareils de distillation_, of which a warehouseful existed at Goletta but were forgotten. The water, as drunk by the soldiers, was nothing more or less than a purgative, and produced dysentery as a matter of course. Typhoid infection originally came to Goletta through the Perpignan battalion, and was fostered by the insufficient accommodation of the first military hospital in the old Tunisian arsenal. Here many deaths occurred before either beds or bedding were provided, the patients dying in their ordinary clothes, and under circumstances too painful to relate. It was not until the 16th August that the Kheir-ed- Din Palace could be obtained for the ambulance.

Dr. Pozzi was the accredited representative of the Society for the Relief of Wounded Soldiers, of which the Duc de Nemours is President. From the very first the Society pressed its offers of assistance on the military authorities at Tunis and in France. It received a stereotyped answer, “We will apply to you for what we require.” Nothing was ever asked for, all other considerations being apparently sacrificed to false _amour propre_. The Society proposed to send a supply of flannel belts to Tunis. General Farre replied that every soldier had one, and declined the offer. The necessity for these belts in Africa is a matter of notoriety, but it was only after considerable delay that they were supplied to the infantry. Here red-tapeism came into play, and fresh demands and discussion were required before the cavalry could obtain them. In the early days of December the wants of the artillery, engineers, and other corps _were still under consideration_. General Japy at last allowed Dr. Pozzi to distribute 300 cholera belts _sub rosâ_ amongst the artillerymen at Tunis.

Dr. Pozzi now fondly hoped that everything was now going on well. Hardly a fortnight after we had parted at Tripoli a remarkable letter was written by Surgeon-Major Bailli from the Carthage or Kheir-ed-Din Palace Hospital to a friend at Paris:—

_Hospital, Carthage, December 13._—I should have written to you sooner had I not fallen ill, being confined to bed, and generally weak. . . . It verily pains me to see what goes on every day in this hospital, which I selected for special observations. In the first place, the services, medical, pharmaceutical, and administrative, are perfectly independent of each other. The duties of the medical men are, of course, confined to writing prescriptions for food and drugs, and the druggists execute the orders as to the latter without the chief of the medical staff having the slightest wish to say a word to them. The administrative officer is the supreme manager of the nurses, and also supplies the provisions and superintends the _materiel_ and distribution of food. Something may be contrary to the interests of the patients; the food may be badly cooked, the hours of the meals irregular; through negligence or incompetency, the steward may have omitted to make certain purchases prescribed by the doctor and indispensable to some patient; the attendants may neglect or not perform different little duties often of immense importance in particular circumstances; yet the doctor cannot make a reflection on the steward. This official is perfectly independent; he is generally a man of limited experience and education, who had hitherto been a petty military officer, as in the case of our large hospitals, and only enjoys the rank of captain, whereas the chief doctor is assimilated to that of colonel. The doctor’s only recourse, when the service is perfectly intolerable, is to the commissariat officer, who is placed above all three services. Here, at Carthage, as it happens, the administrative service is conducted in a deplorable manner. The attendants shamefully neglect their duties. Patients often remain for a whole day without receiving their medicine; they are often made to swallow it all at once. A convalescent from typhoid fever procured, nobody knows how, supplementary victuals, which he concealed under his mattress, and died of indigestion. Another needed help to move from his bed; the attendant was away; he was obliged to go alone; he fell, and I found him lying on the sand, for most of the patients are under tents, without boards or mats, a point to which I shall revert. “Can the service in time of war be as good as in time of peace?” is the attendant’s reply to a remonstrance. At what a war; and at Carthage, too! The chief medical man complains, let us say to the commissariat officer. If the latter says anything to the steward, which does not necessarily follow, the latter is furious, and thenceforth he is at daggers drawn with the chief doctor. All the attendants of course side with the steward, as they are involved in the blame. Every opportunity is taken of giving annoyance to the doctor, and in the end the sufferer again is the unfortunate patient, whom the attendants, stewards, and commissariat officer all come to regard as a costly incumbrance, the source of all their trouble and _ennui_. The steward is closely interested in the economy of his management. The cheaper it is the higher is his premium, and the better note he gets from his superior, the commissariat officer, as being a careful manager of the public money. The regulations say “Best quality;” but he replies there was none, and he had to buy what he could. Sometimes there are neither eggs nor poultry in the market, so beef and haricot-beans are given to the patients. The economy is great, the premium substantial, the note of the superior good. You will say, why not get the food from Marseilles, whence there are three packets a week? But this would involve greater labour and expense, hence less premium. And as for cleanliness, which is also the business of the steward, the cesspools for the last four days have been running over (a pipe is said to be clogged), and if anything is necessary in an hospital filled with patients suffering from typhoid fever, dysentery, or diphtheria, it is the immediate repairing of such accidents. Another point of importance is the insufficient number of the medical staff. While the number of the regiments has been increased, and proportionally also the commissariat, our ranks have remained the same as before 1870, whence arises overwork for us at the expense, as usual, of the patients. At the commencement of the wet season the hospital had been five months in existence, and the greater part of the patients were still under great single canvas tents, eighteen to a tent, and packed so close together that you could scarcely pass between them. When there was heavy rain the water dripped through the canvas at different spots, and the patients often woke up quite wet. The weather was very tempestuous, and the wind blew through the frail tents erected on the fine sand of the shore. An insufficient supply of necessaries obliged many to go outside in wind and rain, and there were no sandals or slippers to protect their feet from the wet sand. There was a simple preventive for all this—viz., the erection of wooden sheds. They were demanded by the chief doctor from the first, and required at the latest to be ready for the wet season. They are not yet ready. They were begun in October, then already late. Thus, the patients are still under tents which for months have not been changed or turned and are literally infected, thereby, of course, considerably augmenting the mortality. The wet season will probably be finished before these sheds are ready. Things would evidently be very different if the doctors, who, of course, have an interest and pride in the condition of their patients, had the management of the service of the hospitals. When one asks why things are organised as they are, one is positively amazed and shocked at the power of routine, and at the depth of the public indifference to the fate of the poor young French soldiers who happen to fall wounded or ill and who always and everywhere—in the Crimea, in Italy, in Mexico, in Tunis—are in an enormous and revolting proportion, sometimes ten times as great as necessity warrants, and always superior to that of other European soldiers. The English, in recognition of the services rendered by the sanitary corps in the Ashantee Expedition, have called it the doctors’ war. I will not pronounce the name ours deserves. Another fact that has passed under my eyes was this—a fortnight ago 70 of our patients were ordered to be conveyed to the province of Constantine by a packet, the hour of departure of which was fixed. They were taken in carriages to Goletta to embark. Not a sign was there of the boat, which arrived the next day. Only the commissariat and the stewards could neglect so simple a precaution as to wait till the boat was announced before ordering the patients to be conveyed from the hospital. If such is the hospital at Carthage, 36 hours’ voyage from Marseilles, what must be the ambulances in the interior? The bulletins of the commissariat report that the hospital at Carthage is provided with everything, and is the most admirably conducted hospital in Tunis.

To this follows a postscript in which the writer reverts to the subject of the infection of the hospital at Carthage. The poison does not come from without, but is fabricated in the tents themselves, which are constantly full. The Kheir-ed-Din Palace holds scarcely 100 patients, and is already too full. There is no interval between the departure of the convalescent and the entry of the new patient, who takes his place after a change of sheets in the still warm bed. The result is that the place after four months’ use has become a perfect sink of infection. Diphtheria has become settled in it, and the only remedy is an immediate removal by steamers of all the patients not suffering from that disease, and able to be transported to France or Algeria. The letter concludes as follows:—

Last night a terrible tempest destroyed four large tents. You can imagine the scene, the broken poles falling on the beds, the canvas rent, the rain pouring upon the unhappy patients, and the bugle summoning the attendants to carry the poor fellows into the unfinished sheds.

A few days after the publication of this remarkable letter I happened to travel to Marseilles in an hospital ship. The military authorities had chartered the passenger steamer “Martinique” to convey a number of convalescent soldiers to France, and on these subjects their will is law. With one or two exceptions my fellow-passengers were all doctors, some of them in charge of the patients, others going to recruit themselves. The day before we left Goletta, Dr. Bailli had been called to account for the publication of his letter, and sentenced to thirty days’ arrest as a preparatory step to being placed in _non activité_. The talk on board was chiefly of sanitary grievances and Dr. Bailli. More army doctors came on board at La Calle and Bone. Their conversation was still of hospitals and Dr. Bailli. Everybody endorsed his views, regretted his fate, and admired his courage. My next-door neighbour at table was one of the few real heroes of the last Punic War. Dr. Veillon had seen all the Khamír campaign, and for several months had been in charge of the pestilential camp at Fernána. Worn almost to a shadow with anxiety and fatigue, himself stricken and debilitated with fever, he was going back to his home in France with a hopelessly shattered constitution and a recommendation for the Cross of the Legion of Honour. He told me the same sad story of Fernána as I had previously heard from Dr. Pozzi. “I joined the Fernána camp in June,” said Dr. Veillon; “it was on the borders of a marsh. I had no chemist to assist me. Typhoid fever almost immediately appeared, and from first to last we lost ten per cent. of our garrison. As far as I know not a single individual escaped without attack. Till October the soldiers died dressed and lying on rugs on the ground: then we got beds and bedding. For a time I was forced to perform my duties while disabled by fever myself. Thank God,” he added, visibly shuddering as if at some disagreeable memory of past horrors, “that terrible camp has at last been broken up.”

There is one subject upon which all the army surgeons I have met are particularly bitter. In the midst of all this death and misery, the military chaplains received a gratuity of five francs, in addition to their salary, for each decease. I can to some extent sympathise with the indignation of the doctors.

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I have now told as shortly as possible the story of the French soldiers’ _morts pour la patrie_ during the war in Tunis. Far be it from me, while blaming the authors of the expedition, to detract in the smallest degree from the glory of these young conscripts, many of whom died without a murmur in their country’s service. The admirable patience generally displayed by the French troops amidst these trials and difficulties is beyond all praise. Once I was astonished at Medjez to see the walls of the station covered with the legend _Vive la France, à bas le Général Farre_. In the presence of the narratives of Drs. Lereboullet, Pozzi, and Bailli, I am surprised no longer. Impeachment is out of fashion and favour, but posterity in France and elsewhere will judge both General Farre and his colleague _au Ministère des Affaires Etrangères_.