In relation to the primary object with which she began her Indian campaigns, Miss Nightingale's life and work have great importance. The Royal Commission of 1859-63, which was due to her, and the measures taken in consequence of its Report, were the starting-point of a new era in sanitary improvement for the army. The results have been most salutary. Miss Nightingale's friendship with Lord Stanley and with Sir John Lawrence here served her somewhat as that with Mr. Herbert served in the earlier campaign. In the wider sphere of Indian sanitation generally Miss Nightingale's efforts were not so successful. The field was perhaps too vast, the conditions were too adverse, for any great and immediate success to be possible. Yet this and her other efforts for India were the part of Miss Nightingale's life and work to which she attached most importance, and by the record of which she set most store. Even in the Will (afterwards revoked) directing her Papers to be destroyed, she made exception of those relating to India; and, as already stated in the preface, one of her few pieces of autobiographical record related to her Indian work. Perhaps it was the special affection which a mother often feels for the least robust or least successful child. Perhaps it was that she took long views; and that, foreseeing a future time when many of the reforms for which she had toiled might be accomplished, she desired to be remembered as a pioneer. "Sanitation," said a high authority in 1894, "is the Cinderella of the Indian administrative family."[2] The difficulty of finding money and a reluctance to introduce Western reforms in advance of Eastern opinion are objections with which we shall often meet in the correspondence of Indian officials with Miss Nightingale, and they are still raised in the present day.[3] On the other hand, the Under-Secretary for India, in his Budget Statement for 1913, declared that "the service which has the strongest claim after education on the resources of the Government is sanitation," and explained that "the Budget estimate of expenditure for sanitation comes this year to nearly £2,000,000, showing an increase of 112 per cent over the expenditure of three years ago." So perhaps Cinderella is to go to the ball; if ever the glass slipper is found, let it be remembered, as this Memoir will show, that Miss Nightingale was the good fairy. [2] Sir Auckland Colvin in the _Journal of the Society of Arts_, May 11, 1894, p. 515. [3] As, for instance, in some of the speeches in the House of Lords on June 9, 1913, and in a leading article in the _Times_ of the following day. The speech of Lord Midleton, in introducing the subject, was, on the other hand, upon Miss Nightingale's lines, being founded upon the Report of her Royal Commission of 1859-63. Some pages (194-197) in Mr. George Peel's _The Future of England_ (1911) are on similar lines. * * * * *