The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1900-05-29
WOMEN IN
WAR A PEST
The Amateur Nurses
Do Much Harm.
RUSH OF THE SMART SET
Anecdotes of Paul Krueger--Boer
Correspondence By Scriptural
Texts--Grief Over Cronje.

LONDON, May with the. exception
of the notorious Spion Kop dispatches Mr.
Treves's plague of women" has been
perhaps the most discussed topic of the
week. Not SO famous as Sir William Mac
Cormac, whose name as military sur
geon is known to every one, Mr. Treves
is nevertheless the foremost surgeon in
this country, and when, at dinner given
to him and Sir William at the Reform
Club last Saturday. night, he bluntly de-
clared that 80 far as the sick are con-
.cerned there are two plaques in South
Afrca-the plague of flies and the plague
of women" some. protest was to be ex-
pected. and 1t was soon heard in very
shrill tones. Indignant women wrote to
the papers and reminded the world of
Florence Nightingale. and the noble work
done by the women nurses all over the
world as well as in South Africa Against
these women Mr.. Treves, of course, had
nothing to say; for them he had nothing
but praise. He made his meaning perfect
ly plain when he said Considering the
kind OF war in which we are engaged, and
the number of lives lost, the picture of
number Of elaborately dressed ladies mas
querading in summer toilets and arrang-
ing picnics about Cape Town is a blot on
the campaign" OF course, he referred TO
fashionable sensation hunters who have
gone to South Africa in shiploads-
When these women got to Cape Town
they looked about. for amusement and
| they found it and shared It with nunler-
Gus young officers who got leave from
duty while the troops were still being or
ganzed. But when the n,sogynist Kitch-
ener got out, we have been told how he
went around to all the hotels, examined
their registers and packed off every officer
he found to duty again.
Then the women had to look elsewhere
for amusement. Mr. Treves may be al
lowed to describe where they found it and
how they took ii. The following is his
scathing reply to the attacks made on his
speech at the Reform Club dinner:
THE extraordinary outburst of resent
ment which my remarks about women
idlers at Cape Town has aroused is due
to two thngs-the misreporting of what
| actually did say and an inordinately stu
pid public.
How any reasoning person can possi-
bly, have construed my remarks into a
sweeping condemnation of all women
workers at the front / cannot, for the
life of me, understand, for, of course,
nothing half so foolish or unjust was con-
veyed in what l said at the Reform Club
dinner Probably no one living has deep
er sense than | have of the splendid work
which many large-hearted, unselfish wom-
en-, professional and amateur alike, are
doing in South Africa today.
You may remember that 1 was the
only consulting surgeon that took out
staff of nurses. l did SO because l know
i that women are indispensable to that i'm
portant branch of hospital work. For the
other women-the amateurs, If you care
to call them so-who have given up home,
money and comfort to help in the work of
alleviating suffering, l have only the
deepest admiration. That any one in all
the world should have attached any other
meaning to my remarks, | am, as l said
( before, simply aStonished.
''But'-and here MIR. Treves brought his
clenched right hand into the palm of his
left-'but when l explain the condition of
affairs in Cape Town, where the other
sort of woman is gathered, you will be
able to judge for yourself whether l was
justified in entering a strong protest
against what / described as the plague
of women
Cape Town was. at the time of which
1 spoke, packed with women idlers, the
majority of them society or smart peo-
pie, who yearning for new excitements,
had come out to South Africa to make
holiday. / say, and / say 1t very earnest
ly, that the condition of affairs,
brought about by the presence of these
ladies, was an absolute disgrace to our
country.
The hotels of Cape Town q viii say
nothing of DURHAM were crammed with
/ these people in the enjoyment of what to
them was a picnic on large scale. The
Mount Nelson Hotel was packed with
them, and if a sick or wounded officer
came down from the front in search of
accommodation ne mad not the SIghteSt
chance of getting into decent hotel
! These ladies had not the faintest pretext
for being in South Africa beyond their
own desire to make the campaign a
means of obtaining new pleasures and
excitements.
That, however, was not the worst side
| of their presence. When dinner parties
and other junketing grew wearisome.
! they would make up parties to visit tn
/ hospitals. What shall we do today
! oh, let's go and see the wounded, wOatE
be the preparation to an invasion OF -..e
/ base hospitals and an incalculahle an alr
| of interference with the Wol3s of ,.;e
wounded would, in the course 0: their du-
| ties, be interrupted by ladies bearing per-
| mits signed by personages whose re-
| quest the officers dared not or did not
| care to refuse.
| You know, perhaps. what influence
| means in the matter of promotion, and
| so the women would be taken around the
| wards and the wounded shown to the
| utter disorganization of discipline and
duty. There were cases in which the
| wounded men, aroused half a dozen times
in succession by these meddlesome intru-
ders, turned from them at last. saying:
| Good heavens, shall / ever get any peace?
I'm another instance, a certain medical
| officer complained that it was already
late in the day, and he had not seen one
the horde of busybody women who had
| de his hospital the show-place for the
day.
hese are the women to whom Sir Al
| red Miner referred, and of whom / have
| poken as plague-women who are
| aking the scene Of war and suffering a
lace Ia which 10 satisfy morbid curiosi-
" and find new enjaymeuts
J For the woman who is giving every
hing in the cause of tenderness and COM