448 
THE SANITARY CARE OF THE SOLHIER. 
that since that time the change from 21 years* service to seven and three 
year terms of service is largely to be credited with the reduction of 
mortality. One line, a page farther on, mentions the possibility of 
short service having something to do with the diminution of the death- 
rate and invaliding-rate, but it is only to hint that it masks disease by 
putting men into the reserve who would in old times have been in¬ 
valided. Men returning from India, on the expiration of short service, 
appear to have said to Lieut.-Ool. Evatt, “It is too much bother to 
re-engage; I am constantly getting ague and feeling seedy, and I am 
going to the reserve.** Soldiers say other remarkable things in reply 
to Lieut.-Col. Evatt*s questions. “Dozens and dozens of men** assure 
him that the fib. of meat ration is insufficient and that they are all 
laying out extra money for food. They tell him they would as soon 
sleep on a coir mat as on a barrack-sheet, that they all slept in sheets 
and in night-shirts at home; soldiers* wives assure him that they 
wash their sheets once a week. Certainly the short service system 
does not appear to have extinguished the “ old soldier.** 
I refrain from going into the other points of barrack-life treated in 
the lecture; and for this reason, that I hardly find a single instance in 
which the alleged defects can be laid to the neglect of the regimental 
officers in their care of the soldier. I can see defects for which the 
R.E. are responsible, others which the medical authorities might well 
attempt to remove, others where a want of intelligent co-operation 
between those two departments, as in faulty plans of new buildings, is the 
evident defect. I can also see that Lieut.-Col. Evatt*s system of train¬ 
ing the junior “ sanitary specialists** under him, though admirable in 
plan, seems practically to have been ineffective in many of the matters 
where one would have expected it to show well. Thus:—“When I go to 
the hospital ward and turn down the clothes of the men*s beds their nails 
at times frighten me, they stand out like tiger*s claws, they seem never 
to cut them.** For my own part I have found an immediate cure for 
any sign of this state of things in a hint that at the next weekly 
inspection I shall order shoes and socks off. An occasional barefeet in¬ 
spection is a perfect preventive of defects of this kind, and I may add 
I have never had any difficulty in getting a full parade of men for 
medical inspection if I wanted it seriously. 
To resume, I fail to find throughout Lieut.-Col. Evatt*s lecture a single 
defect justifying its title—a single one in which the fault lies with the 
Regimental as distinguished from the Medical Officer. I think I have 
said enough to show how much could be done by the Regimental Officer 
in removing the abuses which prevent the best being made of the 
soldiers* rations and other allowances, and which tend to make him 
discontented. No class of men are more grateful than soldiers for any 
efforts to protect them against abuses about which their instincts of dis¬ 
cipline make them keep silence. It is no part of my present task to enter 
into any details on this subject of good management; but every officer 
with a high sense of duty must have it at heart, for there is no more 
noble career than that of making rough unpromising material into 
good self-respecting soldiers, helping them to make the best of the 
necessarily rough surroundings of military life, remembering that vice 
will tempt those men least whose life in barracks is the most cheerful. 
