In our leading columns to-day we publish an article on
" Heroes and Heroics " by " A Student in Arms " which incidentally deals with some of the problems connected with war hospitals. Nobody has a better right to express his views on this or any other military question. We venture to say, however, that if he had ever been responsible for, the working of a hospital he would have found • good many difficulties, which he does not scorn to recognize in his otherwise sound and excellent plea for elasticity. In the case of some patients nothing could be more desirable than to allow them `the freest access to their own families. In other oases, say those of enteric or neurasthenic patients, it might well be that such indulgence would prove very injurious. After all, the essential object of a hospital is the cure of the patients. Many of those delightfully irresponsible fighting men in regard to. whom " A Student in Arms " has so deeply moved us under the name of " lost sheep " have families whose views on things in general correspond very much with those of their soldier sons, brothers, or husbands, and who firmly believe that pork pies and cold plum pudding, washed down with a mixture of whisky and "four-ale," are a perfectly suitable, if not indeed necassary, part of an invalid diet.
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