come to regard as a costly incumbrance, the source of all their trouble and _ennui_. The steward is closely interested in the economy of his management. The cheaper it is the higher is his premium, and the better note he gets from his superior, the commissariat officer, as being a careful manager of the public money. The regulations say “Best quality;” but he replies there was none, and he had to buy what he could. Sometimes there are neither eggs nor poultry in the market, so beef and haricot-beans are given to the patients. The economy is great, the premium substantial, the note of the superior good. You will say, why not get the food from Marseilles, whence there are three packets a week? But this would involve greater labour and expense, hence less premium. And as for cleanliness, which is also the business of the steward, the cesspools for the last four days have been running over (a pipe is said to be clogged), and if anything is necessary in an hospital filled with patients suffering from typhoid fever, dysentery, or diphtheria, it is the immediate repairing of such accidents. Another point of importance is the insufficient number of the medical staff. While the number of the regiments has been increased, and proportionally also the commissariat, our ranks have remained the same as before 1870, whence arises overwork for us at the expense, as usual, of the patients. At the commencement of the wet season the hospital had been five months in existence, and the greater part of the patients were still under great single canvas tents, eighteen to a tent, and packed so close together that you could scarcely pass between them. When there was heavy rain the water dripped through the canvas at different spots, and the patients often woke up quite wet. The weather was very tempestuous, and the wind blew through the frail tents erected on the fine sand of the shore. An insufficient supply of necessaries obliged many to go outside in wind and rain, and there were no sandals or slippers to protect their feet from the wet sand. There was a simple preventive for all this—viz., the erection of wooden sheds. They were demanded by the chief doctor from the first, and required at the latest to be ready for the wet season. They are not yet ready. They were begun in October, then already late. Thus, the patients are still under tents which for months have not been changed or turned and are literally infected, thereby, of course, considerably augmenting the mortality. The wet season will probably be finished before these sheds are ready. Things would evidently be very different if the doctors, who, of course, have an interest and pride in the condition of their patients, had the management of the service of the hospitals. When one asks why things are organised as they are, one is positively amazed and shocked at the power of routine, and at the depth of the public indifference to the fate of the poor young French soldiers who happen to