For years to come, the difficulty will be not to extend the work, but to serve such Hospitals as must be undertaken, with respectable and efficient women. The material has, in a great degree, to be created; abundance of applications will be received--the prospect of a pension alone will do that--but the real choice will be very limited. In these Military Hospitals each Nurse must be a Head Nurse, and a trustworthy woman. Many a woman who will make a respectable and efficient Assistant-Nurse under the eye of a vigilant Head-Nurse, will not do at all when put in a military ward or wards, herself the only woman, and Head-Nurse over the Orderlies. As a body, the mass of Assistant-Nurses are too low in moral principle, and too flighty in manner, to make any use of here. Supposing all the Head-Nurses of the great Civil Hospitals[5] offered themselves, there are perhaps not many who could be recommended for a _Military_ Hospital. Some, who are very highly to be thought of, would never bear transplanting into the _res dura et_ servitii _novitas_ of the Army Hospitals. The class from which the Head-Nurses are mainly drawn, tradesmen’s and servants’ widows, &c., will volunteer in numbers, but, in the majority of cases, intending only to lead the idle life of many a London Head-Nurse--“mental, not manual labour”--“Superintendence”-- _i. e._, standing by while the Orderlies do her work and their own. The material has to be created. The rarest powers can do nothing effective in this, in 3, 6, or 12 months. To lay a solid foundation will take the patient, anxious labour of years. To begin with one Hospital would have great advantages. Netley, if it is proceeded with, might be the one, though, in most respects, a Hospital in an ordinary vulgar seaport would be far preferable. Then let the work gradually be extended. It is much more to be feared that the line will be taken of forcing prematurely than of opposing its extension. If it is attempted to occupy all the General Hospitals at once, how is the gratuitous repetition to be avoided of the inevitable misfortune of Scutari, viz., that of beginning on a large scale, with a number of strangers? It certainly should be left to the Director-General to regulate the introduction of Nurses into the General Hospitals--and there is far more reason to fear that he, if unfavourable to the change, will hurry, than obstruct such introduction; indeed it might be better to settle that matter beforehand with the Secretary of State, letting the Director-General be apprised of it, viz., that time is required to effect the gradual introduction of the Female Service with which the Superintendent-General has been charged.