But in war--especially in a war precipitately entered into by a raw and inexperienced people--all such perfection of organization and discipline is out of the question. If a good field hospital is not to be had, the best must be made of a bad one. If a skillful surgeon is not at hand, then an incompetent one must hack away after his own butcher fashion. If selfish and greedy attendants eat up and drink up the supplies of delicacies and wines for the sick, then enough more must be supplied to give the sick the fag end of a chance. It is useless to try to idealize war.... All this, however, Miss Dix could not bring herself to endure. Ready to live on a crust, and to sacrifice herself without stint, her whole soul was on fire at the spectacles of incompetence and callow indifference she was doomed daily to witness. She became overwrought, and lost the requisite self-control.... Inevitably she became involved in sharp altercations with prominent medical officials and with regimental surgeons.[9] It is necessary to recall this in order to understand Clara Barton’s attitude toward the established military hospitals. She was not, in any narrow or technical term, a hospital nurse. She stood ready to assist the humblest soldier in any possible need, and to work in any hospital at any task howsoever humble, if that was where she could work to advantage. But she knew the hospitals in and about Washington too well not to appreciate these infelicities. She had no intention whatever of becoming a cog in that great and unmanageable machine. Clara Barton held Dorothea Dix in the very highest regard. In all her diaries and letters and in her memoranda of conversations which her diaries sometimes contain, there is no word concerning Dorothea Dix that is not appreciative. In 1910 the New York “World” wired her a request that she telegraph to that newspaper, at its expense, a list of eight names of women whom she would nominate for a Woman’s Hall of Fame. The eight names which she sent in reply to this request were Abigail Adams, Lucretia Mott, Lucy Stone Blackwell, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Frances Dana Gage, Maria Mitchell, Dorothea Dix, and Mary A. Bickerdyke. It was a fine indication of her broad-mindedness that she should have named two women, Dorothea Dix and Mother Bickerdyke, who should have won distinction in her own field and might have been deemed her rivals for popular affection. If Clara Barton was capable of any kind of jealousy, it was not a jealousy that would have thought ever to undermine or belittle a woman like Dorothea Dix. Few women understood so well as Clara Barton what Dorothea Dix had to contend with. Her contemporary references show how fully she honored this noble elder sister, and how loyally she supported her.