The Jersey City news. (Jersey City [N.J.]) 1889-1906, 1898-12-16
FRIDAY, DECEMBER IS, 1898
This paper is Democratic in principles
and is Independent in its Uiecs on az e0cas
questions.


wholesale Muruef a.
That uThe Soldiers Be Damned is still
the motto of the Aiger War Department
administration is shown by the news
which comes to us from Manila via Homo
lulu. The dispatches in yesterdays
papers showed that the starvation ana
suffering which desolated the camps OF
the Atlantic coast, from Santiago to Mon
tauk. are being duplicated in the daily
history of our troops in the far off PACING
Islands, which we have undertaken 70
rule.
There are six or seven funerals a day.
The dead house is never emtpy. Inc
HOSPITALS are overcrowded. In the hospi-
tails. hopeless misery holds sway Here
are some extracts from q statement mace
nv Miss schaeffer, a Red Cross nurse
Oh. the utter woe of hospitals, the
helplessness of them. Men as bright, as
noble as God ever made, given UP 70
death, hoping for it, seeking IT, taxing
poison. doing anything that will END the
despair that comes upon them, seeing
nothing before them but days OF pam
and nights of wretchedness without
proper food, alone with no one to give
sympathy or cheer. to write to friends,
to soothe the aching brows orr moisten
parched lips; if by sheer vitality they 90
get better, there is before them nothing
hut the still more cheerless period OIL
convalescenee, with the probability OF a
relapse.
Outside the hospital and even in 1T,
there is such Indifference, petty consld-
Grafton of rank and position, squabbies
about precedence, lack of consideration
in prescribing, and preparing food, while
men are dying, NOT merely of heart hun
ger, but for want of nourishment-
II went through the wards day after
day and men poured out their woes;
soldiers who do not wear their hearts
on their sleeves cried for the pure agony
of their loneliness and despair, made
poignant n vivid by their W telling
of it.
mini of an attendant going through
a ward with a pail of beef broth ladling
it out to fifty or sixty patients indis-
criminately by the cupful, when in the
whole pail there was not enough nour-
ishment for one, even if made OF the
best material. But what it really was
made of I refuse to imagine. In a whole
ward there is not more than one nurse
with experience, and for helpers only
one or two awkward boys who perhaps
never saw a sick room before.
What are We to say of this? Is this the
inevitable consequence of war. when there
is no war going on? The British Govern
ment maintains in India continuously a
much vaster army than ours. The climate
is just as bad as thai of the Philippines
or worse. 1t combines every variety of
bad weather from Alpine frosts and snows
to equatorial swampy heats. Besides the
men are at active work year in and year
out. When they are not fighting, they
are drilling and policing and vice versa,
And yet there is no such sickness or
mortality in India. The Anglo-Indian
regiments thrive on hard work and bad
weather. Even the cholera is pretty
thoroughly kept out of their ranks in
these modern days of sound sanitation.
But there are no politics in the English
Army. England has no Alger. and no
train Of Alger's pets. pervading the Adj
ministration from the heads of the
bureaus at Washington down to the
wagons of the army train and the hospital
tents.
Are the American public to be fooled
n more on this matter? VIII they be
deceived into giving another tsvindieation
to the gang who have made the murder
of the flower of our manhood the special
feature of their first year OF rulership?