soldier, and, as far as we can see, no attempt has been made by the
commissariat to adjust it satisfactorily to the varying conditions to
which he is subjected. The truck system, which has long been abolished by
law in the payment of workmen, is still maintained to some extent in the
army. The soldier is nominally paid 13_d._ per day, but out of this the
authorities stop a certain sum, which varies with the markets, for the
rations and other necessaries supplied to him. The quantity of the ration
is fixed both for service at home and abroad. At home he has 1 lb. of
bread and 3/4 lb. of meat inclusive of bone, an additional 1/2 lb. of
bread being given to troops encamped in England. Abroad the ration
consists of 1 lb. of bread or 3/4 lb. of biscuit, and 1 lb. of meat either
salt or fresh, the additional 1/4 lb. being given to compensate for the
inferior quality of foreign compared to English meat. There are one or two
exceptional rations; but at home or abroad, in peace or in war, the ration
(the quality of the meat being considered) is the same. Simplicity may be
urged in favour of the system, but we fear this is its only merit, and we
are not at all surprised to find the following remarks in the Report:--"We
are of opinion that no ration can be fixed upon which shall be adhered to
in both peace and war. The conditions of life are so different in the two
cases, that whatever is suitable for the one must be either too much or
too little for the other." Common sense would clearly point out that the
ration which would be amply sufficient for the soldier in country
quarters, whose principal occupation is lounging along the street, or
leaning upon a bridge, would go but little way to maintain the wear and
tear of a man when exhausted by the fatigues of an active campaign. The
degree and nature of his labours then may be gathered from the following
extract from the Report of the Commissioners of Inquiry into the Supplies
of the Army in the East:--
"The average weight carried by a soldier on the march, including food
and water for the day, is probably not less than from fifty to sixty
pounds, and while carrying that burden he is frequently required not
only to march considerable distances, but also to move rapidly, and
make other great exertions. In the ordinary course of his duty he is
called upon to watch during the night at longer or shorter intervals,
whatever may have been his previous exertions. He is exposed to every
vicissitude of temperature, and often to the inclemency of the
weather, by night as well as by day, and must be ready to turn out
when required, at any hour, and under any circumstances. He must
generally be content with the shelter of a tent, whatever the climate
may be. When engaged in siege operations, he has to perform, mostly
during the night, the work that a railway labourer performs by
day--excavating and removing earth. When stores are to be landed, he
is often required to do the work of a dockyard labourer. When employed
in active service the soldier, therefore, requires a diet as
nourishing as that which is requisite to maintain the physical powers
of any other man engaged in hard labour involving frequent watching
and exposure."
That is, the soldier is required at times to be a railway navvy, and
something more; but, unlike the navvy, he is not allowed to replenish his
inward man according to his natural desires, but according to a certain
fixed regulation. As well may a stoker limit his engine to a hundredweight
of coals a day, and expect to get any speed out of it he pleased. The
navigator, whilst executing heavy work, is known to eat as much as six
pounds of meat a day. Now we question if any navigator ever worked harder
than the common soldier in the trenches before Sebastopol, yet he was
expected to perform his task on one pound of meat, fresh or _salt_, equal
to three-quarters of a pound of English beef or mutton. The salt meat too
is vastly less nutritive than fresh; and in case the lemon-juice fails, as
it did in the Crimea, scurvy and its allied diseases are sure to follow
its use. Well may Dr. Christison have remarked "that any scientific person
conversant with the present subject (dietaries) could have foretold, as a
certain consequence, sooner or later, of their duty, that the British
troops would fall into the calamitous state which befell them in the
Crimea." It must be evident again that the soldier during a Canadian
winter requires more meat than he does between the tropics. In cold
climates the nitrogenous and carboniferous food should predominate; in
warm climates a larger amount of vegetable food is required. The exact
amount of the different kinds of food, however, requires a special study;
but surely chemistry, which has so admirably catered for the varying wants
of prisoners undergoing fluctuating amounts of exertion, could find no
difficulty in furnishing proper dietary tables for the British army in
different parts of the globe. The Commissioners, in their Report, fully
convinced of the injustice even at home of keeping stalwart English
soldiers upon half a pound of meat per day, recommend that it shall be
increased to a pound.
In the clothing of the British soldier a contest has been long going on
between what is considered by the officers to look "smart," and what is
found by the men to be comfortable. A soldier upon parade and a soldier
going into action scarcely looks the same man. The tight coat, the stiff
stock, and the ugly shako, give a stiffness to his figure which is termed
"a soldierly appearance:" but upon the march or the eve of battle the
jacket is thrown open, the trowsers are tucked up, the shako is thrown
away, and the stock follows suit. He has divested himself of every
particle of clothing which is supposed to conduce to his smartness; but
he is a free man: he can use his limbs with facility, he can march without
fainting, and he can fight at his ease. Major-General Lawrance,
apologising for the retention of the shako, and for the leathern stock,
upon home service, urges that "it is essential to consider the appearance
as well as the comfort of the soldier." Some of the soldiers themselves
wish to keep the stock, provided "that it may always be taken off when
muscular exertion is required." The Commissioners are of opinion, and we
think rightly, that "this condition applied to any part of a soldier's
dress is condemnatory of it." Why should he possess a set of fine weather
feathers any more than the fireman or the policeman? Fitness is the very
essence of comeliness. The Ironsides of Cromwell would have smiled grimly
at the holiday suit of the modern soldier. The Commissioners in their
Report condemn nearly every article of clothing in present use--the stock
as an instrument of strangulation; the shako as neither fitted by size,
colour, weight, material, nor form, for service in hot climates; and the
trowsers as gathering dust on the march. In the Crimea the men were in the
habit of wrapping a piece of bale canvas from the commissariat stores
round their legs, which effectually protected them from the mud and wet.
This suggests a return to the old gaiter used in the army during the early
part of George III.'s reign, and still by some regiments of Highlanders,
or the adoption of a boot to lace over the bottom of the trowsers like the
ordinary shooting boot. The West India regiments are ordered to wear the
Zouave dress--the loose trowsers, leather leggings, jacket, and fez. This
may be well enough adapted for black troops, but we should be sorry to see
our own men tricked out in this foreign fashion.
The chief parts of the soldier's body which require attention, as regards
health, are the head and neck. The head should be protected against the
extremes of heat and cold by every means that science can devise. In
tropical climates we still retain the shako, shielding it from the sun
with a linen cover. The insufficiency of this device is read in the
fearful mortality from sun-stroke, which devastates our army in India at
the present time. The natives wear a cotton turban with an old horseshoe
on the top to protect them from sword-cuts; and the Commissioners
recommend a light cap covered with wadded linen, with a flap hanging down
behind. Like the sola or pith helmet, the protection here is in the slow
conducting power of the material. Mr. Jeffreys, however, in his admirable
treatise entitled "The British Army in India," justly remarks, that the
slower a substance conducts, the longer it retains its heat. A
turban-covered shako worn all day in an Indian sun becomes charged with
caloric to such an extent that it will give out a sensible heat when hung
up in the tent, and will distress the head the moment it is put on; for
this reason the covering should be placed outside the tent at night to
cool. But, after all, though the heat may penetrate very slowly to the
wearer, the time comes when at last it reaches the skull. The protection
may be ample for the acclimatised Hindoo, and yet be insufficient for the
European. Mr. Jeffreys tells us that the scarf-skin of the Indian is so
much thicker than that of the European, that, when serving as a medical
officer, he was obliged to have a lancet ground in a peculiar manner for
vaccinating the horny hide of the native infants. We therefore agree with
him that science must be called upon to give the English soldier a still
further defence against the sun. He has himself attempted to solve the
problem. Instead of the use of the cloth-covered helmets he terms
sun-traps he has constructed an ingenious covering in which reflection,
retarded conduction, slow radiation, convection, and ventilation are
brought consecutively into play. There can be little doubt that
scientifically his contrivance is unexceptionable, and would keep the head
always cool. The weight, however, which his plan necessitates is a
material element, although it is the heat not the weight which kills. If
we desire to form an idea of the amount of heat which is thrown off by a
bright surface, we have only to place our hands before the polished sides
of a common firegrate, when the reflected heat will be found to be very
little less than that directly radiated from the fire. It is just because
these sides cast the heat which strikes them back again that the inner
face is kept comparatively cool. This, therefore, is the best description
of surface to present to the sky. It may be objected that the soldiers
would be dazzled by the helmets of their comrades; but the inconvenience
would only be incident to a curvilinear-shaped helmet, possessing numerous
tangential planes of reflection. A rectangular form, such as that of the
present shako, would reflect the rays of the midday sun either down to the
earth or up to the sky, and there would be no more glare observable than
from the windows of a house, which, except at sunset, are the darkest part
of the building. The helmet of the crusader was made in the form of a tin
pot: this was retained by the Knights Templars, who well understood the
value of the bright reflecting surface and the rectangular shape.
Mr. Jeffreys goes further. He proposes that the body-dress of soldiers
serving in tropical climates should also have a metallic reflecting
surface. Though the idea may seem strange, we think it worthy of
consideration. A good defence against tropical heat must be devised if we
intend to keep India; for we cannot afford to send English regiments to be
wholly destroyed as fighting men every ten years. The sun is the great
ally of the natives; they counted upon its service in the late rebellion,
and we must endeavour to convert this enemy into a friend. A perfectly
sun-proof dress would be worth many armies to us. Some regiments of
irregular horse, which are by far the most picturesque-looking troops we
have, wear a light gray woollen blouse with simple curb chains on the
shoulders to protect them from sword-cuts. This we believe to be the most
suitable garment at present in use. Mr. Galton says that "during the
progress of expeditions notes have been made of the number in them of
those who have provided themselves with flannel, and of those who have
not, and the list of sick always included names from the latter list in a
very great proportion." With a host of such facts, well known to all who
have paid attention to the subject, it seems surprising that the military
authorities should have adopted a linen blouse for the troops in India.
This material is perhaps the best conductor of all the fabrics used in
dress; its unsuitableness therefore for a climate which is alternately
hot, cold, and wet, may easily be imagined. The neck and spine should be
guarded against the assaults of the sun almost as carefully as the head.
In all ages Easterns have been mindful to protect the great nervous
highway. The Arabs invariably bring one of the ends of the turban down
over the neck, and the French have adopted the same plan in Algeria. As
regards the spine, every one has experienced the sense of sickness which
is produced when the back is brought close to a strong fire. Such a fire
the poor soldier often endures for hours when marching under an Indian
sun. Sun-strokes arise as much from this cause as from the exposure of the
head. The Arab has a long tasselled loop of cloth hanging down in the
small of the back, which acts as a piece of solar armour: the English
soldier should have a similar protection, unless we are to consider that
his black knapsack and his neatly rolled great-coat are all that is
required. A belt of flannel should by no means be forgotten. The direct
rays of the sun striking upon the expanse of nerves over the abdomen often
bring on cholera or dysentery. The soldier should have, in addition, a
loose woollen wrapper to serve as a change when campaigning. The value of
dry clothes when he lies down on the bare ground after a fatiguing march
is not to be overrated. "The skin's debility is malaria's opportunity,"
justly remarks Mr. Jeffreys. "The germs of fever, dysentery, and cholera,
stalking over the bodies of a sleeping army, which has been exposed to the
sun by day, quickly scent out the enfeebled skins and divide the prey!"
The colour of the dress is important. Dr. Coulier, who has lately
investigated the qualities of different materials as clothing for troops,
found that white cotton placed over a cloth dress produced a fall of 7
degrees per cent. in heat. When the tube of a thermometer was covered with
cotton sheeting and placed in the sun, it marked 35·1, with cotton lining
35·5, with unbleached linen 39·6, with dark blue cloth 42, with red cloth
42. From these experiments it will be seen that the staring red of our
uniforms absorbs no less than seven degrees more of heat than simple
cotton. As we have to guard against the cold of night, and the damp of the
rainy season, perhaps the best method of meeting the varied conditions of
heat, moisture, and cold would be to give the soldier a simple woollen
blouse of some neutral colour, which, while it did not absorb the sun's
rays, would yet be pleasing to the eye. Gray, faced with red, or girdled
with a red sash or belt, would have an excellent effect, and would answer
admirably.
It is singular that whilst our troops at home, for the last twenty years
within the immediate influence of a growing sanitary science, have
profited little by its teaching, the troops quartered abroad within the
same time have experienced a marked decline in their annual rate of
mortality. In the year 1835 Lord Howick caused a parliamentary inquiry to
be made into the causes of the fearful mortality among the troops on some
of the foreign stations, especially in the West Indian islands. The
returns proved even worse than had been anticipated. The mortality in
Jamaica was no less than 128 per thousand, or, in other words, every
eighth man who stepped on board a transport for service in this beautiful
island was doomed to leave his body for the land crabs. In the other
islands the mortality was somewhat less, the deaths being 81 in the
thousand. The reason of this decimation had long been known. More than
fifty years ago Robert Jackson had pointed out the deadly nature of our
military posts, situated for the most part at the embouchures of rivers
and in low harbours, or placed in the immediate neighbourhood of
pestiferous swamps. Salt pork and rum were called in to finish the work
malaria had commenced. Five days a-week were our soldiers rationed upon
this poisonous food; and, to make the injustice more glaring, the convicts
upon the island were fed with fresh meat, and were consequently in good
health. In 1843 Sir Charles Metcalfe determined that the troops should no
longer perish. He altered their diet and removed them entirely from the
marshy plains to Maroon Town, which stands at an elevation of not more
than 2,500 feet on the Blue Mountains, but sufficient to lift European
life above the level of the deadly fevers of the climate. The effect of
these changes exactly corresponded with what had been foretold by Jackson;
the mortality speedily fell from 128 to 60 per thousand, and is now
reduced to 32. Thus for many generations the mortality of white troops in
Jamaica was fourfold what it should have been, through ignorance and
extravagance; for, strange to say, the difference between the cost of the
poisonous salt pork and the healthy fresh meat caused a saving to the
Government of 80,000_l._ a-year.
In other colonies the improvement in the health of the troops has been
marked of late years. At Ceylon, where resort has been had to
hill-stations, the mortality has decreased from 74 per thousand,--at which
ratio it stood until 1836,--to 38 per thousand at the present time. During
the same period, we find that at St. Helena the rate has fallen from 25 to
12, at Gibraltar from 22 to 12, at the Ionian islands from 27 to 17, and
at Newfoundland from 37 to 11 per thousand. From this gratifying statement
we must except the greatest dependency of all,--our Indian Empire. In
Bengal the mortality of the British soldier, just before the mutiny, was
even greater than it had been twenty years before. On the average of
nineteen years previous to 1836, it had been 75 per thousand; on the
average of the next period of eighteen years, it was 76 per thousand. In
Bombay, the mortality has decreased 2 per thousand; but in Madras the
improvement has been such that the deaths have fallen from 76 to 41 per
thousand. Whilst India remained in the hands of the East India Company,
and the British troops stationed there seldom exceeded 25,000, the high
mortality of the presidency of Bengal might have escaped observation; but
now that the European soldiers are more than doubled, the necessity for
putting their sanitary condition upon a proper footing must be obvious.
"Colonel Tulloch has informed me," says Mr. Martin, in his admirable work
on the Influence of Tropical Climates on the European Constitution, "that
between 1815 and 1855 there died, of European soldiers belonging to her
Majesty's and the East India Company's army in India, very nearly 100,000
men, the greater portion of whose lives might have been saved, had better
localities been selected for military occupation in that country."
Estimating the value of each soldier in India at 100_l._, this would give
a sum of 10,000,000_l._
The barracks and cantonments of India, as regard vastness and solidity,
are, perhaps, not to be equalled by any in the world. The military
buildings of Burhampore, in Bengal, are said to have cost, during the
seventy-seven years they were in existence, including capital and
interest, 16,891,206_l._; yet this costly station, like that of
Secunderabad, in the Madras presidency, was planted in an absolutely
pestiferous locality. All over India the localities of the barracks are
bad, and their construction and arrangement extremely faulty. "Nearly the
whole station of Cawnpore," says Mr. Jeffreys, "running some miles along
the river, was so cut up into small 'compounds,' by high mud walls, that a
bird's-eye view would have given it the appearance of a divided
honey-comb. These walls, with the profusion of trees they enclosed, seemed
as if designed to cut off every current of wind from the inhabitants of
the ground-floor dwellings hidden within them." In another case, as if to
make stagnation doubly secure, he mentions that there is a square wall
within a square wall, surrounding a cantonment. Hence we can easily
account for the fearful mortality among European troops in India. As if to
make patent to us the folly we commit in constructing these vast
bakehouses, the native troops, who hut themselves outside our lines, and
thus get plenty of air, present the unique example of a soldiery whose
mortality is below that of the population from which it is recruited. In
the Bengal presidency the mutiny has cleared away the difficulty; for it
has swept the mass of these pestilential cantonments from the face of the
earth. The question, how shall we profit by the loss? is answered by Mr.
Martin in his "Suggestions for promoting the Health and Efficiency of the
British Troops serving in the East Indies." He insists that we must
station our troops, in future, upon the hills, but not on such stations as
we have on the Himalaya and Neilgherry mountains,--positions of 7,000 feet
above the sea; for, although they are a security against the fevers of the
country, they are apt to induce bowel complaints, which are almost as
fatal. His opinion is, that elevations of from 2,800 to 6,000 feet would
yield a climate most congenial for European troops,--such, in fact, as we
have already found in the Blue Mountains of Jamaica. He especially draws
attention to the solitary hills,--"those islands of the plains,"--as
capable of affording a refuge from the fevers that inundate the low-lying
ground. Here the mass of the British army may be lodged until their
services are needed. From these eyries, like the Romans of old, they may
watch the champaign country, and be ready, at a moment's notice, to move
on any threatened position. There is no intention of recommending the
abandonment of strategical points, or large cities which serve as
arsenals, simply because they are not wholesome. There are dangers to be
braved in peace as well as in war. Yet our experience of the heroic
qualities of the British soldier justifies the assumption that small
bodies of them, placed in strongly fortified positions, could hold out
against all comers until succour should arrive from the hill-stations,
especially now India is being traversed by railroads and telegraphs. But
even these stations are not sufficient to restore patients suffering under
chronic disease. These, if possible, should at once be sent home. The sick
officer is invalided, and speedily recovers in the air of his native land;
the common soldier, on the contrary, is forced to enter the hospital,--too
often to die. The men, moreover, should be recruited for a shorter time.
At present they practically serve seventeen years in India,--a period
which breaks down the constitutions of the majority. It is the exposure to
heat for a great length of time, and not its intensity for a short period,
that destroys European life. If we entrap the ignorant labourer by the
most unworthy artifices,[31] we should, at least, be merciful to him. Let
the term of service be reduced to ten years, and then the stream of
stalwart Britons, fresh from the mother-country, would enable us, in
conjunction with hill-stations, to keep a powerful and resistless grasp
upon the country.
It may well be imagined that, if the sanitary condition of our army is so
bad in times of peace, its sufferings in war must be greatly exaggerated.
The experience of the Peninsula, Walcheren, Burmah, and Sebastopol, has
unfailingly proved this to be the case, and, in manifold instances, the
evils were such as could have been avoided with ease.
"The barracks and the military hospital," says Miss Nightingale,
"exist at home and in the colonies as tests of our sanitary condition
in peace; and the histories of the Peninsular war, of Walcheren, and
of the late Crimean expedition, exist as tests of our sanitary
condition in the state of war. We have much more information on the
sanitary history of the Crimean campaign than we have of any other. It
is a complete example--history does not afford its equal--of an army,
after a great disaster arising from its neglects, having been brought
into the highest state of health and efficiency. It is the whole
experiment on a colossal scale. In all other examples the last step
has been wanting to complete the solution of the problem. We had in
the first seven months of the Crimean campaign a mortality among the
troops at the rate of 60 per cent. per annum from disease alone--a
rate of mortality which exceeds that of the great plague in the
population of London, and a higher ratio than the mortality in cholera
to the attacks; that is to say, that there died out of the army of the
Crimea an annual rate greater than ordinarily die in time of
pestilence out of sick. We had during the last six months of the war a
mortality among our _sick_ not much more than among our _healthy_
Guards at home, and a mortality among our troops in the last five
months _two-thirds only of what it is among our troops at home_."