THE TRENTHAM COMMISSION.

Timaru Herald, Volume CIII, Issue 15743, 30 August 1915, Page 6

THE TRENTHAM COMMISSION.

The Commission's report shows mismanagement and a lack of forethought in regard tto some important aspects of the Trentham camp, though its general administration was apparently a model as compared with that of the Australian camp at Liverpool, 1 which has been condemned in 1 almost all departments by a Commission. The trouble at Tren- ; them was confined to the medical side, and it began when 2200 men of the Trentham Reariment were added to the normal reinforcements and sent into a camp which should not have held more than 4500. Bad weather, epidemics which were general at j the time, and the germ of

cerebrospinal meningitis, which, imported by some human carrier into the camp, proved as contagious there as it has been in Great Britain and Australia where soldiers have been massed together, produced troubles vritli which the medical section of the Defence Department was inadequate to cope. The military headquarters staff or medical staff should have foreseen these possibilities, but they did not, and when sickness broke out suddenly and spread quickly they had all too few facilities for dealing with it. The position was made worse by the fact that the special hutments from which much hoped were found when bad weather came to have been badly planned, and most of tlie cases of illness were among the men who occupied these structures. Allowances can be made now for the authorities which were less easily made when the public mind was excited on account of the condition of the camp, and party Politics gave an odcre to accusations which were riot all well founded. The war had thrown great and novel burdens on the Defence Department—burdens that were, for the most part, admirably borne—at the same time that 1 ' it had reduced its staff. The medical branch was about to be reorganised when the war broke out. If any of its members showed actual incompetence under a novel strain the Minister no doubt will deal with them. It is satisfactory to learn from the Commission that there is nothing naturally wrong with the Trentham site, that there was no instance of undue delay in the removal of any patient from the camp to hospital, and 110 proof of neglect or improper treatment, in cases specially cited to the Commission. Before the Commission sat the Government had taken .steps to repair defects that had been exposed, and both the expert Board which it) appointed then and the Commission are agreed that, with improvements to the drainage and the hutments that have been or are being carried out, Trentham will be as good a camp, for not more than 4500 men, as could be anywhere established. The system of two camps, at Trentham and Tauherenikau, provides as-ainst the risk of even temporary overcrowding in the future.