THE SANITARY CAKE OF THE SOLDIER. 
223 
And I should like to point out how one class of men has settled the 
question about rations, that is the sergeant class. The soldier is paying 
from 3Jd. to 4^d. a day for his ration, but the sergeant is paying 
sometimes from 6d. to 7id. But is the sergeant a harder worked man 
than the private ? I do not know that he is physically ; but he, too, 
wants more food, and the measure of the sergeant's money is what the 
soldier wants, he wants 4d. extra given him in pay or allowances to 
make him a better fed man. And you see it in this way. The moment 
a sergeant is broken, and put back in the ranks, he is pulled down at 
once by the want of food. 
And as regards the question of men going to the different recreation 
rooms (which is growing up more every day) to get some more food in 
the evening I would like to say that it is working up towards one thing 
which we have and the sergeants ought to have. What would our life be 
without our mess dinner ? It is working up towards a good substantial 
evening meal for the soldier. I cannot think why the sergeants do 
not have an evening meal. They say it would cost too much; but 
it would keep them out of harm's way. When a man is eating he is 
in a very safe condition. The “ liver " comes much more from drinking 
than from food. I was for several years Medical Officer of a great 
military school, and those years acted upon my life enormously, I shall 
never forget them. When I went there I found those young growing 
boys getting dinner, just like the soldiers, at a quarter-past 2 o'clock 
in the day, and they were left all the evening to their own devices— 
as to food supply with very bad results. I say that for a man to live 
on lobsters, sardines, and salmon, and that kind of indigestible food in 
his bedroom at night is a defective system. I say that the tea squad 
system was a defective system—and I know it because the cadets come 
before me ill, and I say that whatever I have done in my service there 
is nothing that I congratulate myself upon more than that I was able, 
by constant and reiterated reports, to get that late dinner for them; 
and it is a perfect success, I think, in every way. The soldier, I maintain, 
who is wandering round the town now looking about for amusement, 
and also, I think, looking perhaps for food, would be a happier and a 
better man if he got a good meal in the evening. 
I would say a word also about the cooking. Throughout nearly 
the whole of the Woolwich garrison the preparation of the food of 
the men is still done in the barrack-room. We have reports con¬ 
tinually of the lavatories being choked by pieces of vegetables and 
potato skins. And the dishes are not made in the kitchen under the 
surveillance and instruction of the master cook; he is devoting his 
whole time to watching the consumption of the coal, whereas he ought 
to be, and is sometimes, instructor of the cooks. The dishes are often 
made up by the men by roster, and there is not much real development 
in this most important art of cookery; and the result is that the 
sergeant cook, a trained specialist from Aldershot, is below watching 
the coal instead of watching the actual preparation of food. This is a 
matter that might well come before you. Then you ask, perhaps, is 
there room enough in the kitchen to do all this ; it is very small. 
Well, a kitchen should be devised with a preparation-room outside of 
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