ABSTRACT
Sir,—In several of the later letters published in The Times reference has been made to the possibility and propriety of employing the wives of soldiers as nurses to our sick and wounded at the seat of war. I am well acquainted with the habits of this class of society. I am well aware of what may be considered the difficulties of the case, and of the arguments likely to oppose themselves to the measure. Still I am its advocate, and I think it may be shown that this employment of the wives of soldiers as nurses is not only a humane measure, but one that promises good results. I do not think the public are yet quite aware of the condition of those women who were left behind, nor of the intense suffering of those who were permitted to accompany the expeditionary force to Turkey. A large number of soldiers' wives are now in the East; some, after the troops sailed for Varna, were left for long weeks at Gallipoli. under promise of being sent to England, crowded together, almost devoid of means, in Turkish houses that swarm with rats and vermin; others courageously went on to Varna, where, in extreme misery, they were many of them swept off by cholera; a portion were even taken on to the Crimea. Now. of these poor creatures, the public hear nothing. On the first landing of our troops at Gallipoli, soldiers' wives were compelled to lie in ditches at night, only sheltered from the intense cold of the Turkish spring by their husbands' blankets. I have seen them standing washing in the burning sun on the Turkish hills, the skin peeled from their arms and faces, and with the thermometer 110° in tents. Many of these women had in England been servants of the wives of officers, and were well conducted in that condition. Numbers still remain in Turkey; others are to be found at Malta; is it not hard that they are simply to suffer there, and that character and reward are to be gained by others, without giving the soldier's wife her chance also? Why should not the women be employed who are on the spot, and be trained to habits of usefulness, while they meet protection and encouragement? Why. also, should not some of the poor women now in England, whose sympathies are all in the East, be suffered to go there as nurses to their husbands and their husbands' comrades, not alone, but under the authority of competent and responsible women who should train them in their duties? These women now here are, thanks to a liberal public, many of them in the receipt of alms; but would it not be better far to train them to the self respect of independence, to enable them to gain good characters as useful members of society, and to have ready for future exigencies a band of military female nurses, no longer the mere recipients of temporary charity, but acquiring habits which will eventually render them most valuable items in the mechanism of war? I believe the matter to be well worthy of attention, and I therefore venture to suggest it, under the full impression that due encouragement and protection to the wife of the soldier will not only make him a better man, but will go far to remedy those evils which, in the condition of the woman, are a stain upon our character as a Christian and civilized people.
