1. In defining the office and duties of the Superintendent-General of Nurses, her direct communication with, and qualified subordination to, the Director-General of the Army Medical Department, and, abroad and in war, with and to the Principal Medical Officer of the district, or equivalent, must be very exactly defined. If the formation and government of a body of women to serve in the Hospitals of the Army Medical Department, and in these alone, is contemplated, the less the Director-General and the Superintendent-General have to do with each other, in matters of detail, the better, and the less chance of collision. For very weighty moral and practical reasons, the sole government of the women must belong to the Superintendent-General, and to the Matrons, whom she delegates, and who are themselves responsible and amenable to her. But it will never _work_ to introduce female service into the Army Hospitals, and to leave the Director-General of the Army Medical Department, which, like everything else in the Army, is and must be a hierarchy, no other power in connection with it, than to write and encourage confidential reports against it. There ought to be a definition of the Superintendent-General’s position as regards him, and also, as regards the Principal Medical Officer of the district, abroad and in war. It is useless, and would be dangerous to evade this; it ought to be deliberately settled, and distinctly stated. In the “General Orders” of March 1856, the Superintendent-General’s complete power over the women, and qualified subordination to the Principal Medical Officer, are well and definitively expressed. It is impossible to appoint the work of the Nurses without the concurrence of the Director-General. It does not do to put a woman into a great ward, or several smaller wards, of men, with several orderlies, without clearly defining her position there. To put her under the orderlies would be to make her being there at all much worse than useless; but she cannot have assigned to her the responsibility of the ward or wards, and consequently, authority over both orderlies and patients, herself being responsible to the Surgeon and Matron, without the concurrence of the Chief of the Army Medical Department.