CAPT. LOWNDES: said there was always some patient who would go out and make trouble, that he had been investigated by the American Legion, by ladies’ committees and by religious societies, all of whom he invited to come to the hospital, as there was trouble if they were told not to come. He said he had met with two criticisms: one was that the nurses were particularly harsh, to which he replied that he generally had trouble getting the patients to go out as some of them generally fell in love with the nurses; the other that the patients would not pay any attention to the Commanding Officer when he made inspections. GEN. CUMMING: “The next subject “Nursing” will be presented by the Superintendent of Army Nurses, Major Julia C. Stimson.” MAJOR STIMSON: read the paper “Nursing”, as given herewith: “The subject of nursing in relation to the care of the ex-service man is a very big one and can scarcely be handled adequately in the ten minutes allotted to it. There are, however, certain phases of it that can be mentioned. The response of the nursing profession to the call of the country during the time of war is well known, and the character of the achievements of the 25,000 trained women who entered the government services at that time has been often recounted, but little has been told of the patriotic devotion to duty that has been exhibited by nurses since the Armistice. I have not come today to bring bouquets and laurel wreaths, but I do wish to call attention to the marvelous development of one branch of governmental nursing work under conditions that in many instances were harder to bear than most war conditions, and to ask for the service the recognition and cooperation it deserves. At the present time there are more nurses in the U.S. Public Health Service, (1796), than there are in the combined nursing departments of the Army, (774), and the Navy, (488). The figure given me for the present Public Health nursing staff is about 1800, an expansion from forty odd at the time the service was authorized to care for ex-service men, on March 3, 1919 by Act of Congress. To realize the full meaning of this expansion and the development of the organization required to manage the service, it is only necessary to recall the fact that in the spring of 1919 when the Public Health Service called for volunteers for its Nursing Service, the Army and the Navy were both discharging from their Nurse Corps great numbers of women. In one month alone in that year 2500 nurses were demobilized from the army. They were all tired, worn-out women. You all recall the state of mind of both the soldier and the officer during those months, when morale was at its lowest ebb, because of homesickness, fed-upness, and desire to get back to civil life. Nurses as well as men were full of complaints, and to be freed from governmental control was the thing that to all of them seemed the ultimate good. Moreover, many who came from overseas had been marking