The Hospital Commission of Inquiry has just turned up here, very dignified and grand in a train of half-a-dozen saloon carriages, which must be a great nuisance on the overworked lines. I have had several talks with the R.A.M.C. officers and men here about the alleged neglect and deficiencies, especially with the second in command, a very candid, liberal-minded man. He quite admits the shortcomings. The service is under-manned. There are not enough medical officers and not enough orderlies. This hospital, for instance, is entitled to a full colonel and two lieutenant-colonels, instead of which it has only one lieutenant-colonel, and the same proportion is preserved in the lower grades. Men in all departments are stinted, and the hospitals are all seriously short-handed. They have done their best to make up the deficiency with volunteers and civilian doctors and surgeons, but it is only partly made up. Their numbers compare very unfavourably with the numbers allotted to other nations' hospitals in the field. This has all been represented to the War Office many times of late years without result. At the same time, with the men and accommodation they had, the hospitals have done their utmost. In the base hospitals there was nothing to complain of. At Bloemfontein there was great suffering owing to lack of medical staff, surgeons, nurses, orderlies, &c., and also owing to the lack of necessary supplies and medical comforts. For the shortness of the staff the War Office is of course responsible, and as blaming the War Office hurts nobody, I dare say the Commission will come down on it severely. For the shortness of supplies, this was due to the working of our line of communication, which considered the efficiency of the army a great deal, and the lives of the sick very little. But here you come to individuals, and the matter craves careful handling. It is no fun fighting for you people at home, because you don't know when to clap. The English papers' account of Prinsloo's surrender have just come in. By Jupiter, for all the notice you take of it, it might be the capture of a Boer picket and a dozen men. Here have we been marching and fighting and freezing and sweating and climbing up great Alpine mountains in the snow for weeks, and captured 4000 great ugly live Boers and all their guns and baggage, and by the god of war, you hardly take the trouble to say thank you. This sort of thing will just suit Hunter, because his idea of bliss is to do the work and run the risk, and then somehow to evade the praise. But he ought not to be allowed to evade it. It is true we had no war correspondents with us, but I should have thought the bare facts would have spoken for themselves. It was the first thing of the war and our one really big score off the Boers. However, I shall not discuss it any more. I am disgusted with you. Mafeking day is about your form. LETTER XXIV FIGHTING AND FARM-BURNING Frankfort, _November 23_, 1900.