On this page
-
Text (1)
-
1168 THE LEABB R. [Saturday,
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
-
-
Transcript
-
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
Stories Of The War. Our Camp In Turkey, ...
bilities , commend the tone and spirit of the book . Mrs . Young writes— -we were going to sajr—en militaire , in a sharp , brisk , clear , decisive manner ; add to this a vivid sense of the picturesque , and every now and then a certain feminine felicity of discrimination , and you have a series of very readable chapters . Fortunately , too , Mrs . Young has bestowed a woman ' s observation and a woman ' s sympathy upon a subject which only a woman can understand and feel correctly : we mean the position of the soldier ' s wife in the camp . She returns again and again to this distressing difficulty , and we can warmly recommend these chapters of actual experience to the attention of all who have a thought for the living ; as well as for the dead , and who , while they eagerly subscribe to the widows and orphans , would do well to inquire into the lot of the wives who are permitted to share the rough endurance and the stein privations of the camp . ° Hear Mrs . Young en the condition of THE BRITISH SOUDIEH ' S WIFE .
I know nothing , whether at home or abroad—whether in the lanes and alleys that spread infection , moral and physical , over London , or in the distant heathen lands where slavery prevails , and of which religious philanthropists consider it their duty to preach—that so loudly aid so justly appeals to the sympathies of the men and women of England , as the condition of tie soldier ' s wife . I saw many of the women of this great army half dead with grief , when regiment after regiment inarched on board their ships from the shores of our island , - with bands playing and handkerchiefs waving from fair hands , to cheer on these gallant bands . I heard : their entreaties to be allowed to follow . I saw their tears and despair -when , with helpless little ones in their hands , they went their way , almost penniless , to proceed . by a railway to some imaginary home—where want was to add its crushing power on the mother , as anxiety and grief had already done upon the wife . I was associated with many of the poor creatures who , ttnhappily , as the most respectable and unburdened , were allowed to accompany the army to Turkey ; and they were suffering , uncared for , and in some case * dissolute . Self-respect was lost ; and the women were a disgrace to the army ,
instead of . being , as they should have been , useful items in their camp machinery . At home , we know how it is . Who would take a soldier's wife as an assistant in any domestic duties ? "Who does hot dread her habits ? To whom is not her very name a word of fear ? And why is this ?—why should such a stain remain to be mixed up with the gratitude due to the brave men who shed lustre upon England's glory ? Why should the honest fanner ' s daughter , or the weU-principled servant-girl—who , like he * superiors in rank , is won toy the glitter , gaiety , and charm thrown over a dull provincial town by the presence of the military—be doomed , as the result of her becoming a soldier's wife , to lose character , self-respect , and all that renders woman the safeguard of society , in whatever grade of it her lot may fall ? Why cannot the original feelings of modesty in ihe soldier ' s wife be protected even in a barrack ? and if suffered to accompany the army at all , why should she remain exposed to the miseries that men would shrink from , while vilified for vices , the certain , the inevitable result of that titter carelessness of her condition , which , in those who are responsible for such things , forms indeed a Mur upon the fair page of their humanity ?
The reader would not have thought these remarks out of place , while attempting to afford a glance at our great camp of Scutari , if he had seen these poor creatures as I did ; - —if he had seen them , fevered under a burning sun at Constantinople , left at Gallipoli under promise of a speedy return to their native land , and . remaining for months in Turkish houses , swarming with rats and vermin;—if- , he had seen them as they fell with sickness at Varna , terror-stricken and helpless : if he had known how much of their vices abroad had been the result of cruel carelessness at home , and remembered how the barrack system must either wholly demoralise the purest-minded woman , or crush her beneath a fearful sense of its shame and horror . * The appearance of the groups of soldiers' wives at Scutari first attracted my sympathy , and therefore 1 introduce them at this point ; but matters grew worse aa we advanced , and , with misery , vice , as its too frequent companion , in all times and places . Again ,
I cannot help thinking that the English soldier ' s wife is one of those miserable mistakes in our social system , by which we are apt to make people bad , and then severely punish them for being so , by measures only calculated to make them worse . Wo have * found out , in part , one of these mistakes , a 3 affected juvenile offenders against the laws , and perhaps may act more wisely for the future ; and it were well could w « discover another mistake , which perhapa this war may throw some light upon , and lead us to more judicious , Christian , and merciful treatment of the wives of our soldiers . The time may come when a -woman's modesty may be considered worthy of protection , —when she is not driven to intemperance , to render her insensible to the shame of a new , and , to som « , terrible position , —when the religious education of this class of society may be considered as necessary aa that of the heathen native of Africa or India , and when , as a woman , her influence for good or evil may bo recognised , and even the soldier ' s wife—degraded as she now is in the social scale , too often deeply sunk in habits of vice , drunkenness , and depravity—may yet find true sympathy—a sympathy which may protect original goodness , —may raise the sinner from the slough of despond , —may train , educate , counsel , and forgive ; ultimately rendering the soldier's wife not only a respectable and useful member of society , but improving the tone of our army by her example and influence .
It will be allowed by every one conversant with our present war , how cruelly the protection of our women h < is been neglected . Many—a vast deal too many ( ainco they wont with undefined duties )— -wore permitted to encumber the army ; the rest , married , some with , some without leave , were condemned to riak the very probalblo chances of starvation at homo . Those who went had neither carriage nor shelter provided for their -wants : tlioso who stayed had the public opinion entirely against them , aa far as affected their chances for honest employment . The reader will have seen with mo what the poor women suffered at Scutari and Gallipoli , and will believe liow much more judicious the French are in keoping tho wives of their soldiera nt liome , unless they could givo them decided duties , under proper protection , -with tho force . Nothing seemed more to amazo tho French eoldiorn than to see transports crowded with women;—women and horses!—for truly this \ ma tho arrangement , na wo on board the Thnbor saw tho Clcorgiana transport pnsa us , laden in this incongruous rnnnnor . I was asked a hundred questions at dinner about tho matter ; and in good truth , tho answers must liavo boon moat unsatisfactory . Tho fact wnn , that I had seldom felt more aahamod of any chance association than I -vvna at tho dinner-table of the Thabor , when , ns an English aoldior ' a wife , I became identified with this subject , and waa expected to explain , to Drench officers , our military * I cat ) hardly boliovo thnt tho fuct is generally known , that on tho mnrrlago of a soldier his wife is introduced into a barrnok-rooin occupied l > y aovcml pontons of both aexoa and ho lives without privacy of any kind , lieda nro placed in rows , without partitions : tho ear i » profiinoil , nud tho practice or pioua or virtuouu habits rendered impossible . Even at our publio nchoolnt KoBanl , near Preston , in JLuncaaliiro , canvas pni-tittonn luivo boon considered nocoaaury to secure solf-rcspoct , nnd permit freedom in tho cxereino of religious hnl > it »; nnd thus ovon tho schoolboy enjoya a protection not provided , or doomed , it would anponr . requisite for tho yonng and jperlmpa originally puro-mmdod and virtuous wifo of the jbritioh Boulier .
system of protection and employment to the wives of our soldiers . Of course they could not understand me . " Were they going out to the seat of war , instead of Sisters of Charity , to minister to the comfort of the sick or wounded ? " "Oh no !" " As cooks ?"— " Certainly not . " " Where were they to live ? what carriage had we for them ? who -was responsible for their conduct ? what pay had they for their duties ? " What could I say ? Could I lower the opinion held by the French of our army , out discipline , our religious estimate of ourselves as a moral and benevolent people , by telling the Colonel of the Fifth , and my friend the staff officer of the Prince Napoleon , that our women were perfectly untrained in all habits of usefulness that they were allowed to crowd out , to live like sheep upon the Turkish hills ; that there was neither carriage nor shelter provided for them ; and that , should their conduct be bad , they would be turned out of the tents they shared with the men to sit in the burning sun , or lie in ditches outside our camps ? Could I say that these poor creatures might be cast into Turkish prisons , or left in Turkish houses , under promise of passages to th « ir native land , half-starved , unpitied , and nearl y killed , or frenzied , by rats and vermin ? And yet the history would have been too true , saddening as it is to remember or to record .
It may be asked , where were the women of the regiment all this time ? -why did they not act as nurses ?—A very natural inquiry , and one that would suggest itself to any non-military person , who might have become aware of a large number of women , the -wives of soldiers , having been allo-wed to accompany the army to Turkey , and being then in the camp with their husbands . Several of these women had been cooks , as well as nurses , in the families of officers at home ; but it is not the system to allow or encourage them to be useful in an hospital . The soldier , as he did here , lies on the ground upon a bed of cut grass , and takes his tenth share of the attendance of an ignorant unpractised soldier like himself ; and the women are washing in the sun , or drinking to drowu misery , or quarrelling about the right to some wretched shelter , or doing some bad thing or other , most likely , to which their whole previous training , in the condition of soldiers' wives , and the suffering of their present state , urges them . '' .. [¦
How much wiser it would have been to form such women as were allowed to accompany their husbands into a band , or " administration , " as the Trench call it!—to have given specific duties to classes— -made some needlewomen , some cooks , some nurses is to have given them encouragement , and the reputation of having a character to support ; to have provided proper shelter for them in the exercise of their duties , proper protection against the evils prominent in their position ; and so , by adding to their comfort and rendering them responsible for tie due performance of womanly duties , have originated an idea in these women ' s minds of the true value of character , and of the real importance they might be of , if acting their part in the great drama of war about to be played . If every regiment had taken this view , and judiciously acted on it—as soon as they left England , employing the women in hospitals , under the control of the medical officers , as in training-schools , till the forces left Varna for the Crimea , and then storing them , as it were , under proper superintendence , at Scutari , Gallipoli , Therapia , or the Dardanelles , until their services were again required— -what immense good might have been done ! -what enormous sums saved !
We , in Turkey , should not have witnessed vice going hand-m-hand with misery . We should not have seen the rays of a burning sun beating down on the heads of our unhappy women , and dr iving them , half-frenzied , to intoxication for relief . Our ears would not have been assailed by the language of blasphemous despair , and utter recklessness as its result . Nor should we here in England have had our feelings harrowed by accounts of the want of woman ' s hand to raise and succour , and by knowing how much Has been endured before the aid that benevolence afforded could possibly reach ita object . Mrs . Young enjoyed peculiar opportunities of studying tbe admirable military system of our brave allies , and her testimony corroborates tlie
observations of all who have watched the administration of the two armies since the beginning of the war . In a word , the French are born soldiers , as the English are born sailors ; but it is in all that relates to the administration of an army that the adroit and fascinating symmetry of the French system , and the coarse and brutal clumsiness of our own , present the most ludicrous and lamentable contrasts . It is to be hoped that our national vanity will condescend to take a lesson or t \ vo from our ancient foes , and now ( we trust for ever ) brothers in arms . The one fact of the two armies having fought and fallen side by side is worth half the cost of the . , but we shall do well to better our instruction in so glorious a rivalry of discipline and valour . Here is a scene on board
A FRENCH TRANSPORT . The Thabor waa crowded with French troops ; but fortunately they ware French , bo that lesa annoyance was to be expected ; and moreover I looked to have a very interesting opportunity of observing a good deal of their system of military discipline . It was possible to enjoy fresh air too , which would not have been tho case on board an English transport ; but here , on each sido of the deck , was stretched a rope , behind which tho men boing ranged , room in the centre was secured for the accommodation of tho passengers . On tho left hand wore grouped tho " Administration , " as they are called , composed of a certain number of men employed as attendants on tho sick , with tailors , carpenters , shoemakers , and artisans of all sorts . Tho attendants on the sick , as it may bo supposed , are an eminently valuable class ; they are carefully selected for tho work , and regularly trained in their responsible and important duties . All these soldiers composing tho " Administration , " appeared full of intelligence
during tho day they employed themselves in reading , working , and writing—ono or two among them oven drew with considerable skill and tasto ; while , in tho evening , they formed into little circles , and amused themselves by singing . It ia notable , however , with what decorum thia matter waa conducted ; there was no uproar , riot , nor impropriety of « ny kind . A sort of loader mounted a little -way up the rigging of the vcaaol , to direct tho proceedings ; each circlo followed in order , with their gleos and choruses : the aongs wore uminlly aelcctcd from Guillatime Tell or tlio Sonnambufa ; occasionally wo hud a solo from Uornngor , or glcoa in honour of Napoleon . It was obaorvftblo in thoao last , that tho enthusiasm expressed towards the great loader did not appear fio much to arise from Ida exploits , art from his fratornisntion with the Fronch array , an ovary verso ended with tho chorua ' * He ato with hia soldiers 5 "— " II
mangoait avoc sea floldats . " Ono man , of extremely delicate appearance , was very popular , from hia talent for singing French romances , which ho did with a charming voice and oxquisito taste . Tho pnrt of tho matter the moat remarkable , howovor , waa tho porfcot propriety observed , the good tosto uhoym , in tlio selection of tho muaio , tho order in Huccoasion observed by tho singorn , and tlio courtesy and good-feeling , which wore novoi violated . This la » fc charaoturintic waa also very remarkable at Smyrna . Tho French soldiers all went on shore , —a certain tariff hawing been flxod for tho boata employed , —and I looked with terror for thoir ronppoaranco , oxpocting scon 03 of intoxication nnd punishment . I had no eauso for alarm , however ; my friends all returnod sober , polite , and in tho boot posmblo humour with each other and thoir boatmen . Tho great sooret of tho order which pervades tho French army , and ita gonoral
1168 The Leabb R. [Saturday,
1168 THE LEABB R . [ Saturday ,
-
-
Citation
-
Leader (1850-1860), Dec. 9, 1854, page 16, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_09121854/page/16/
-