It is not easy to suggest the many qualities of character in Miss Nightingale which the experiences in the Crimea brought out into bold relief--qualities which are just as much needed in nursing today as they were then. Her unflinching endurance of the hardships which the conditions forced upon her; her generous recognition of the work of others; her thoughtful care of the nurses who had been entrusted to her, under the most difficult conditions--should be remembered quite as much as her wonderful organizing qualities, her keen insight into situations, and her general ability to produce results--to bring things to pass. It was a recognition of these latter qualities that led Queen Victoria to exclaim: “Such a clear head! I wish we had her at the War Office.” After the war was over and a general inquiry as to conditions and methods of sanitary improvement in regard to the army had been started in London, an army doctor writing of her said: “It may surprise many persons to find from Miss Nightingale’s evidence that, added to feminine graces, she possesses not only the gift of acute perception, but that on all the points submitted to her she reasons with a strong, acute, most logical, and if we may say so, _masculine intellect_, that may well shame other witnesses. They maunder through their subject, as if they had by no means made up their minds on any one point--they would, and they would not; and they seem almost to think that two parallel roads may sometimes be made to meet, by dint of courtesy and good feeling, amiable motives that should never be trusted to in matters of duty. When you have to encounter hydra-headed monsters of officialism and ineptitude, straight hitting is the best mode of attack. Miss Nightingale shows that she not only knows her subject, but feels it thoroughly. There is, in all she says, a clearness, a logical coherence, a pungency and abruptness, a ring as of true metal, that is altogether admirable.” To have failed in appreciation of the part her assistant nurses played, during the excitement of wartime conditions, would have been easy and, to a degree, excusable--but she did not fail. To take the whole credit for achievement to oneself is a very human failing, but it was not one of Florence Nightingale’s failings. One illustration of her appreciation of her associates in the campaign shows this characteristic plainly. Of one woman whom she had placed in a position of more than ordinary responsibility, she wrote: “Without her, our Crimean work would have come to grief--without her judgment, her devotion, her unselfish, consistent looking to the one great end--the carrying out of the work as a whole--without her untiring zeal, her accuracy in all trusts and accounts, her truth, her faithfulness. Her praise and reward are in higher hands than mine.”