Wheeling register. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1878-1935, 1898-12-15

I1 oE AS<A-N1N
AND OSITION. SQUABBLES
ABOUT PRECEDENCE AND LACK
OF CONSIDERATION ARE PREVA-
LENT.
Honolulu. via San Francisco, Deem
Der 1.-THE United States transport
Scandal has arrived here from Manila,
from which place she left November 10.
She brings a number of officers, ninety
one discharged and furloughed men,
and two Red Cross nurses. She brings
the largest mail that ever left Manila,
213 sacks for San Francisco and one
for Honolulu. The vessel will resume
her voyage on or about the 10th inst.
Miss Schaefer, Red Cross nurse.
who went from Honolulu to Manila,
arriving there September &c, returned
here. She makes startling charges
as to the way United States soldiers are
taken care of in Manila.
Miss Schaefer made the following
statement for publication:
Scores of the soldier boys are dying
in the hospitals at Manila just for
want of proper nourishment. They
say the government allows sixty cents
a day for each patient. You can save
dozens of lives on five cents a day.
ooh, the utter woe of tie hospitals,
the helplessness of them.
Men as bright, as noble as God ever
made, given up to d@ath, hoping for it,
seeking it, taking poison, doing any
thing that will end the despair that
comes upon them.
"Seeing nothing before them but days
of pain and nights of wretchedness,
without proper food alone, with no one
to give the sympathy or cheer, to
write to friends, to soothe the aching
brows, or moisten the parched lips,
if, by sheer endurance of nature or
obStinacy of vitality they do get better,
there is before them nothing but the
still more cherries period of GONZALES
cence, with the probability of a re-
lapse and the old WEAKNESS of despair
to be suffered again. No wonder
there are six or seven funerals day.
No wonder the dead house is never
empty.
"And outside the hospital, and even
in it. such Indifference! Petty consid-
Grafton of rank and position, squabbles
about precedence, lack of consideration
in prescribing and preparing 1000,
while men are dying, not merely or
heart hunger, but for want OF nour1sh-
ment.
Il have gone through the wards day
after day, and as / spoke to this one
and that. and they poured out their
woes, men who do not wear their hearts
on the sleeve, cried for the pure agony
of their loneliness and despair, made
pregnant by their own way OF tell
ing it.
Il got just so that ! could not go
through the wards. What could l do?
With the need of care, nourishmenI
and hospital treatment, | was utterly
helpless to do anything; just one cog in
the great remorseless grinding ma
chine, whose material was noble men
and whose grist was death.
Il do not mean that attendants of
the hospitals are careless or Indifferent.
Many are trying to do their best.
There is lot of worthiness and unset
fishness among the attendants at the
hospitals. But there is so much mex
perience, so many clogs to those who
would do much. To think of an at
tendant going through ward with
a pail of beef broth, ladling it out to
the fifty or sixty patients indiscrimin-
ately by the cupfull.
I'm the whole pail there was not
enough nourishment for one, even if
it were made of the best material.
But what it really was made of, | shut
my eyes and refuse to imagine. In
whole ward there is not more than one
nurse with experience and for helpers,
only one or two awkward boys, who
perhaps never saw sick room before"