SOUTH AFRICAN WAR—HOSPITALS COMMISSION. (Hansard, 21 February 1901)

THE EARL OF KILMOREY
My Lords, I rise to ask the Under Secretary of State for War what steps the Government intend to take with reference to the recommendations contained in the Report of the Royal Commission appointed to consider and report upon the care and treatment of the sick and wounded during the South African campaign; page 69, lines 6, 7, 8, and 9. With the indulgence of the House, and for the benefit of those noble Lords who may possibly not have read the Report of the Royal Commission, I would ask leave to quote the words to which I allude in my question. The Commission say:— We recommend the appointment at some early convenient time of a departmental or other committee of experts to inquire into and report upon the steps needed to effect the following objects. I will not attempt to occupy your Lordships' time by going into those objects in detail. I may say that I have no wish or desire to embarrass His Majesty's Government by putting any inconvenient questions. Of the numerous points included in the question of Army reform this is the only one upon which a Royal Commission has reported, and I hope that the Government will take action upon it within a reasonable time.

* THE UNDER SECRETARY OF STATE FOR WAR (Lord RAGLAN)
My Lords, I am afraid I cannot give the noble 651 Earl the information he desires as to the exact manner in which the recommendations of the Royal Commission on Hospitals are to be carried out by the Government. The noble Earl is aware that the Report is a very important and a lengthy document, and that it has only just been issued. The Government therefore have had hardly time as yet thoroughly to digest the suggestions. But I can assure the noble Earl that we are fully alive to the great importance of the question of a thorough reorganisation of the medical system of the Army, and that in any reorganisation that will be undertaken we shall avail ourselves to the utmost of any advice or assistance which we can obtain either from the heads of the medical profession or from any other source whatever.

§ EARL SPENCER
I do not think the noble Lord has answered the question put to him by the noble Earl on the Cross Benches—namely, whether the Government intend to appoint a departmental committee or other committee of experts to examine into the matter as recommended by the Hospitals Commission. I can quite understand that the noble Lord may not wish to go in any great detail into the steps the Government are going to take. All I say is this, that this matter is of great importance to the Army, and particularly to the unfortunate wounded and sick, and therefore it is necessary to ascertain whether the Government intend to take the matter in hand at once themselves, or whether they are going to act upon the Report of the Hospitals Commission, at the close of which there is a very specific recommendation.

§ THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS (The Marquess of LANSDOWNE)
I think the noble Lord who spoke for the War Office made it perfectly clear that that Department is fully alive to the great importance of the recommendations embodied in the Report of the Hospitals Commissions. As the noble Lord has said, the Report has only been a very few days in our hands, and it is rather too soon to make an announcement as to the particular action which we should take in order to give effect to its recommendations. The Commission suggested that there should be appointed at an early or convenient time a depart- 652 mental or other committee of experts. Well, my Lords, I am able to say that it is the intention of the Secretary for War to have recourse to the best expert advice he can obtain from the medical profession or from other sources; but whether that advice is to be taken by the appointment of a Committee or Commission, and whether the inquiry should be departmental or not departmental—these are matters of detail which we may fairly ask for a little time to consider. Your Lordships may rest assured that the investigation promised in another place by the Secretary for War will take place, and that it will be, as he said, a very thorough one indeed.

§ LORD TWEEDMOUTH
My Lords, I think we have a right to complain also of the supplementary answer given by the noble Marquess. Those who have read the Report and recommendations of the Hospitals Commission will agree that they felt their inquiry was by no means complete; that they had not the powers necessary to enable them to carry out their duties efficiently; and that they thought it was absolutely necessary, in order to come to a fair conclusion on the subject, that a supplementary inquiry should be held, for they say— We recommend the appointment at some early convenient time of a departmental or other committee of experts. All the noble Marquess suggests is that the Government are going to take the best advice they can get from medical experts. Well, my Lords, I do not think the advice of medical experts alone is at all sufficient.

§ THE MARQUESS OF LANSDOWNE
I said experts generally.

§ LORD TWEEDMOUTH
Then I withdraw my remark. I do not think the plea of the noble Marquess with regard to the want of time is altogether sufficient. This is the 21st of February; the Report was delivered in January, and the Government have had a month to consider whether they should not at once adopt some of its recommendations. I am afraid that the Government take somewhat too optimistic a view of the matter, as they have done on other occasions. I would venture to quote a sentence taken from a newspaper which is cer- 653 tainly not unfavourable to the Government—I mean The Times. This is what that newspaper said on Saturday last— The Report needs no criticism, though it may be none the worse for a little elucidation by men who, like Mr. Burdett-Coutts and Mr. Murray Guthrie, were on the spot, and saw for themselves what was going on Remembering the limited powers of the Commission, its composition, and the general considerations by which it was no doubt governed, no one can regard the Report as other than a severe condemnation of the medical arrangements hitherto thought adequate. The Times also adopts as its own a further description of the Commission given in the House of Commons— It is not incorrect to refer to the Report-, of the Hospitals Commission as a Whitewashing Report, yet the thinness of the wash and the obtrusiveness of the dirt which it covers are apparent to all. If that is the opinion largely held throughout the country, I do think it is most desirable that the Government should, as early as possible, meet the views of the noble Earl on the Cross Benches. I do not think the methods of taking evidence adopted by this Commission are such as to commend themselves to those who have this subject most dearly at heart. As to the arrangements, I can quote a case within my own knowledge which seems to be condemnatory in the greatest degree of the system adopted in South Africa. A leading surgeon in the Yeomanry wrote home in the autumn stating that there was a great deal of avoidable death from enteric going on, because with the exception of that one hospital and another—the Portland Hospital, I think—there were no hospitals out there, military or otherwise, which had any machinery at all for the purpose of sterilising milk. That is bad enough, but I should like to give the case of a neighbour of mine who went out to South Africa with a Militia regiment, and was placed in command of a post on the line of communications twenty or thirty miles from Kimberley. He fell ill, and was sent to the military hospital in Kimberley. The medical officer in charge was unable to see him when he entered the hospital, but fortunately he found a friend, an officer in the "Welsh Fusiliers, in one of the beds, who said to him— Take my bed; I am only shot in the leg; it is clear that you are ill from some dangerous disease, and if you do not take this bed you will not be able to get another. 654 He was induced to take the bed, and for three days he lay in it in his clothes without having been examined. Fortunately for him he was removed to a civil hospital, and in due course recovered. He made no complaint of the treatment he had received. He said that, after all, it could not be helped. The medical officer of the hospital had too many cases to attend to there were no nurses and no orderlies, and the hospital work was done by convalescents. If that could happen at a place where there was no pressure—I may say my friend told me he came back from South Africa without having heard a shot fired—it is difficult to realise what must have-happened at places where there was pressure on the hospital accommodation from the wounded in battles and from the sick of fever. I do not wish to use anything like exaggerated language. This is a matter of the highest importance, and I venture most earnestly and strongly to impress upon the Government that they should not delay the issue of a thorough searching inquiry additional to the one which has already taken place.

THE EARL OF KILMOREY
I am not quite satisfied with the answer given by the noble Lord. I can well understand that the Government are extremely busy, and therefore the request for further time is not an unreasonable one. Under the circumstances, and in view of the extreme interest felt by the whole country in hospital reform, I will reserve to myself the right to call further attention to the matter on some early day.