time for weeks, awaiting orders for the breaking up of their units, and embarkation, and upon their arrival home they found their communities, which they had left so short of nurses, were clamoring for their services. Under such conditions was presented the need of the ex-service man. A new federal nursing department asked them to give up their personal desire for freedom, their longed-for plans, and to enter—what? and to do—what? It is hardly necessary to describe the kind of hospitals these nurses were asked to enter, nor the conditions under which they were to live. You would scarcely believe the details that I could tell you unless you, too, have heard the accounts of the able Superintendent of Nurses of the Public Health Service. You know, perhaps, what some of the old Marine hospitals are like, and some of you know some of the old Army hospitals taken over by the Public Health Service were like. You don’t know, I am sure, about the utterly unworthy and unsuitable quarters and messing arrangements for nurses which many staffs have had to endure, and still do endure in some instances. The fact that there are now 1800 nurses in the service bears witness to the clearness of her vision of the need on the part of the Superintendent of the Corps, and her valiant presentation of it, and to the assistance given her by the American Red Cross Nursing Service which has spread the call and facilitated recruiting. The Nurse Corps of the Army and Navy were old, established departments, with traditions and customs behind them, with a status recognized by all in the service and honored by officers and men alike for their many years of efficient work. The nurse in the U. S. Public Health Service had no such advantage, and to her and her associates and to the officials who have championed her cause against what have at times seemed almost unbearable difficulties too great praise cannot be given. General Sawyer has asked me to present the difficulties that lie in the way of the kind of nursing service to the veteran that ought to be given, and to suggest if I can, a plan for meeting these difficulties. The greatest problem of the nursing care of the ex-soldier is not in the Army and the Navy, because the proportion of the veterans patient to the regular Army and Navy patient in those services is so low that it presents no particular problem. It is, of course, in the U.S. Public Health hospitals that the problems exist most noticeably.