No sane defender, therefore, of this charity supports it on any such ground as that it is the principal benefactor of the soldier. The Commission alone could no more support our hospitals than it could the universe. But the homely adage, "It is best to have two strings to your bow," applies wonderfully to the case. In practical life men act upon this maxim. They like to have an adjunct to the best-working machinery, a sort of reserved power. Every sensible person sees that our mail arrangements furnish to the whole people admirable facilities. Nevertheless, we like to have an express, and occasionally to send letters and packages by it. When the children are sick, there is nothing so good as the advice of the trusted family physician and the unwearied care of the mother. Yet when the physician has done his work and gone his way, and when the mother is worn out by days of anxiety and nights of watching, we deem it a great blessing, if there is a kind neighbor who will come in, not to assume the work, but to help it on a little. The Commission, looking at the hospitals and the armies from a different point of view, sees much that another overlooks, and in an emergency, when all help is too little, brings fresh aid that is a priceless blessing. To the plain, substantial volume of public appropriations it adds the beautiful supplement of private benefactions. That is all that it pretends to do. There are some special reflections that bear upon the point which we are considering. This war was sprung upon an unwarlike people. The officers of Government, when they entered upon their work, had no thought of the gigantic burdens which have fallen upon their shoulders. Since the war began, Government, like everybody else, has had to learn new duties, and to learn them amid the stress and perplexity of a great conflict. And among other things, it has been obliged, in some respects, to recast its medical regulations to meet the prodigious enlargement of its medical work. Beyond a doubt, much help, which, on account of this imperfection of the medical code itself, or of the inexperience of many who administered it, was needed by our hospitals at the commencement of the war, is not needed now, and much help that is needed now may not, if the war lasts, be needed in the future. But it takes time to move the machinery of a great state. And when any change is to become the permanent law of public action, it ought to take both time and thought to effect it. You do not wish to alter and re-alter the framework of a state or of a state's activity as you would patch up a ruinous old house. If you work at all in any department, you should wish to work on a massive, well-considered plan, so that what you do may last. It is not likely, therefore, that, in the great field of suffering which the war has laid open to us, the public ministries will either be so quickly or so perfectly adjusted as to make private ministries a superfluity.