These were by no means official communications. Her
soul, pent up all day in the restraint and reserve of a vast
responsibility, now at last poured itself out in these letters
with all its natural vehemence, like a swollen torrent through an
open sluice. Here, at least, she did not mince matters. Here she
painted in her darkest colours the hideous scenes which
surrounded her; here she tore away remorselessly the last veils
still shrouding the abominable truth. Then she would fill pages
with recommendations and suggestions, with criticisms of the
minutest details of organisation, with elaborate calculations of
contingencies, with exhaustive analyses and statistical
statements piled up in breathless eagerness one on the top of the
other. And then her pen, in the virulence of its volubility,
would rush on to the discussion of individuals, to the
denunciation of an incompetent surgeon or the ridicule of a self-
sufficient nurse. Her sarcasm searched the ranks of the officials
with the deadly and unsparing precision of a machine-gun. Her
nicknames were terrible. She respected no one: Lord Stratford,
Lord Raglan, Lady Stratford, Dr. Andrew Smith, Dr. Hall, the
Commissary-General, the Purveyor--she fulminated against them
all. The intolerable futility of mankind obsessed her like a
nightmare, and she gnashed her teeth against it.
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