you could see the
view from here, the barren expanse of veldt stretching miles away, the
cluster of tin roofs and the few leafless thorn-trees beyond, I have no
doubt you would laugh at this fancy of a spring day. And yet I am sure I
can feel it; there is a change in the air. It has grown elastic and
feels alive, and there is a smell in it to my mind of earth and
vegetables. Yesterday, when I toddled in as far as the village, I saw a
little fruit tree in a garden that carried white starry blossoms at the
ends of its black twigs. It gave me quite a thrill. Oh, to be in England
now that April--Dear me! I was forgetting 'tis autumn, and partridges
and stubble fields with you.

The Hospital Commission of Inquiry has just turned up here, very
dignified and grand in a train of half-a-dozen saloon carriages, which
must be a great nuisance on the overworked lines. I have had several
talks with the R.A.M.C. officers and men here about the alleged neglect
and deficiencies, especially with the second in command, a very candid,
liberal-minded man. He quite admits the shortcomings. The service is
under-manned. There are not enough medical officers and not enough
orderlies. This hospital, for instance, is entitled to a full colonel
and two lieutenant-colonels, instead of which it has only one
lieutenant-colonel, and the same proportion is preserved in the lower
grades. Men in all departments are stinted, and the hospitals are all
seriously short-handed. They have done their best to make up the
deficiency with volunteers and civilian doctors and surgeons, but it is
only partly made up. Their numbers compare very unfavourably with the
numbers allotted to other nations' hospitals in the field. This has all
been represented to the War Office many times of late years without
result.

At the same time, with the men and accommodation they had, the hospitals
have done their utmost. In the base hospitals there was nothing to
complain of. At Bloemfontein there was great suffering owing to lack of
medical staff, surgeons, nurses, orderlies, &c., and also owing to the
lack of necessary supplies and medical comforts. For the shortness of
the staff the War Office is of course responsible, and as blaming the
War Office hurts nobody, I dare say the Commission will come down on it
severely. For the shortness of supplies, this was due to the working of
our line of communication, which considered the efficiency of the army a
great deal, and the live