[102] _Journal of the Royal Army Medical Corps_ (Bibliography B, No. 52), p. 393. The difficulties--including the great Dress Question--which Miss Nightingale had with her staff, appear clearly enough in the "Rules and Regulations for the Nurses attached to the Military Hospitals in the East," which Miss Nightingale presently sent home to Mr. Herbert, who had them printed, and handed to every candidate for appointment as nurse. "As it has been stated," says the preamble, "that the nurses who have gone to the hospitals in the East, have in some instances complained of being subject to hardships and to rules for which they were not previously prepared, and of having to do work differing from what they expected, it has been thought desirable to state distinctly the regulations relative to the outfit, clothing, duties, and position of nurses in military hospitals." The nurses, it is then set forth, "are required to appear at all times in the regulation dress with the badge, and never to wear flowers in their bonnet-caps, or ribbons, other than such as are provided for them, or are sanctioned by the superintendent." Another rule defines the precise quantities of spirituous liquor which a nurse will be allowed; a third states that "no nurse will be allowed to walk out except with the housekeeper, or with a party of at least three nurses together, and never without leave previously obtained." The whole code shows the necessity which Miss Nightingale had found for enforcing strict discipline.[103] And even with these new regulations to back her, she still found discipline hard to enforce. Her official letters to the War Office complain of unsuitable recruits being sent out to her, and of the greater number of them as being "wholly undisciplined." [103] The manuscript of this document is preserved among the archives of the War Office. The text of these, "the earliest rules defining the position and duties of a female nurse in any military hospital," has been printed elsewhere (Bibliography B, No. 52). II In December 1854 Miss Nightingale was astonished to receive an announcement that a party of forty-seven more nurses, under the care of her friend, Miss Mary Stanley, were on their way to join her. She remonstrated, and threatened to resign:-- "You have sacrificed the cause so near my heart," she wrote to Mr. Sidney Herbert (Dec. 15); "you have sacrificed me, a matter of small importance now; you have sacrificed your own written word to a popular cry. You must feel that I ought to resign, where conditions are imposed upon me which render the object for which I am employed unattainable, and I only remain at my post till I have provided in some measure for these poor wanderers."