Show CAllING FOCI SOlmmS GREAT LACK OF WILLING HANDS AND FACILITIES I Extracts From a Letter Written By a i Nurse Stationed at a General Hospital Near Washington i Editor Herald The following extracts ex-tracts from a private letter of a nurse who is stationed at a general hospital within sight or almost within sight of the dome of the capitol at Washington Washing-ton dated early in August speak for themselves I We do not have half enough good I willing hands and it is next to impossible impos-sible to get things to work with Imagine Im-agine us if you can one or two trained I nurses with 20 typhoid fever cases and one sponge and perhaps six towels to wash them all and one tumbler to take their milk out of There is absolutely abso-lutely nothing to be ha9 for wash ra sand s-and not onetenth enough clean clothing cloth-ing to keep their beds decent Combs are unknown among the men in the hospital and delicacies for them to eat when convalescing are almost al-most as rare The food is coarse and often poorly cooked and cooked for everybody just the same We need all sorts of common com-mon appliances and conveniences for I the sick j Such a condition of affairs might have found some excuse early in May and might have been possible during the corrupt political Cameron administration adminis-tration of the war department in the early days of the gigantic war of the rebellion when Lincoln was obliged for political reasons to make the interests in-terests of the nation subservient to the interests of a corrupt clique whose influence in-fluence had been so purchased at the nominating convention But as soon as he dared President Lincoln sent the inefficient in-efficient rotten secretary to St Petersburg Peters-burg Does anyone believe that such a condition of affairs as above portrayed could have existed six weeks i I > r I Stanton took the helm When we compare com-pare the United States of today with I its 70000000 people fighting Spain with the northern states in i 1SG1 with 20000 I 000 fighting the southern confederacy and consider the difference in the situation sit-uation the war with Spain has been I a mere incident And the administration administra-tion of the commissariat and medical departments has been disgracefully inefficient in-efficient and incompetent It is said of Napoleon the Great that his success Jn the field was not more due to his genius j gen-ius for handling troOps in battle than to his wonderful mastery of details which enabled him always when it was within the compass of human ability to j keep his troops supplied with those I things necessary to their highest efficiency I effi-ciency What stronger evidence of the shameless incapacity and inefficiency of j the administration of the war department depart-ment could be found than the fact that j four months after the war began hospitals hos-pitals lying within cannon shot of i Washington are wanting in the commonest com-monest and most indispensable articles of hospital supplies which if supplied at all are obtained by the women of the country begging them from door to j door When it became evident that war was at hand the president should have I I posted conspicuously over the entrance I to the war department Wanted A Head No blighted brig adler fourthrate politician however rich need apply The war Is over and just criticism is now permissible Q |