Perhaps he will content himself in his footsoreness by noting that, to reach C 13, he has not had to go up or down any stairs.  This is one of the beauties of the hut system.  It consumes a big area, but it is all on one level—­the ground level.  The patient on crutches can go anywhere without fear of tripping, the patient in a wheeled chair can propel himself anywhere, the orderlies can push wheeled stretchers or dinner-wagons anywhere.  Our visitor for C 13, having escaped from the back of the Scottish baronial building, emerges into a vista of covered corridors, wooden-floored, galvanised-iron roofed.  It is a heartbreaking vista to the poor woman who has had no bus-fare and is burdened by a baby in arms.  It is a vista which seems to have no end.  Corridor branches out of corridor—­A Corridor, B Corridor, C Corridor, D Corridor, each with its perspective of doors opening into wards; and shorter corridors leading to store-rooms and the like.  But the patient or orderly who has dwelt in a hospital where, though distances are shorter, staircases are involved—­or where every trifling coming-and-going of goods or stretchers necessitates the manipulation of a lift—­blesses those level, smooth corridors, with their facile access to any ward, to operating theatres, kitchens, stores, X-ray room, massage department, etc., and their stepless exit into the open air.

Looked at from outside, a hut-ward is—­to the aesthetic eye—­a hideous structure.  Knowing what it stands for, the science, the tenderness and the fundamental civilisation which it represents, we may descry, behind its stark geometrical outlines, a real nobility and beauty.  Entering a typical hut-ward you behold thirty beds, fifteen on each side of the room.  Between each pair of beds is a locker in which the patient stows his belongings. (Woe betide him if his locker is not kept neat!) In the central aisle of the room are the Sister’s writing-table, certain other tables, chairs, and two coke stoves for heating purposes in winter.  The floor is carpetless, and maintained in a meticulous state of high gloss by means of daily polishings.  At a height of a few feet from the floor, the asbestos-lined walls cease and become windows.  There is no gap in the continuous line of windows all down each side of the ward—­a special type of window which, even when open, declines to allow rain to enter.  In consequence of these windows the ward is not only very well lit, but also airy and odourless.  When all the windows are open (which is the case throughout the entire summer and generally the case in winter also) the patient has the advantages of indoor comfort plus an outdoor atmosphere.  At the end of the ward a covered verandah is spacious enough to take an extra couple of beds for those requiring completely open-air treatment.

The ward proper has certain additions:  a kitchen with gas-stove and geyser; a sink-room with geyser and cleansing apparatus of special pattern; a bathroom with geyser; lavatories; a small room for the isolation of a patient on the danger-list; a linen-room; and cupboards.  All these are packed neatly under that one rectangular corrugated roof which looked so ugly and so unpromising from outside.