former were landed at Scutari. Sometimes when Miss Nightingale happened to hear of an incoming vessel betimes, she was able, by special petition to the military authorities, to intercept hospital stores; but she saw (what no one else seems to have done) that the whole system was at fault. "It is absolutely necessary," she wrote, "that there should be a Government Store House, in the shape of a hulk, where stores for the British, from whatever ships, could be received at once from them, and be delivered on the ship-store-keeper's receipt. There are no store-houses to be had by the water's-edge, and porterage is very expensive and slow." In March 1855 Miss Nightingale's solution was adopted.[134] [134] _Statement to Subscribers_, pp. 9-10, and letter to Sidney Herbert, January 22, 1855. As Purveyor, Miss Nightingale was directly concerned only with the sick and wounded; but the condition in which the men arrived at Scutari enabled her to learn the state of things at the front, and she urged upon Mr. Herbert the necessity of sending out warm clothing to the army in the Crimea. "The state of the troops who return here, particularly those 500 who were admitted on the 19th, is frost-bitten, demi-nude, starved, ragged. If the troops who work in the trenches are not supplied with warm clothing, Napoleon's Russian campaign will be repeated here." The terrible experiences of the British army before Sebastopol during the winter of 1854-55 were some fulfilment of her prediction. When opportunity offered she similarly sent suggestions to Lord Panmure; then, in reply to a letter of kind inquiries from him about her health (Aug. 1855), she called attention to the disproportionate number of patients which came from the Artillery, and threw out hints for economizing the men's labour.[135] On a matter of the soldiers' pay, she was the means of remedying a hardship which had struck her at Scutari. She pressed earnestly upon Mr. Herbert that hospital stoppages against the daily pay of the _sick_ soldier (9d.) should be made equal to the hospital stoppage against the _wounded_ soldier (4-1/2.), provided that the sickness be incurred while on duty before the enemy. She made this representation in December 1854, not only to Mr. Herbert, but to the Queen. On February 1, 1855, she heard with great satisfaction that her suggestion had been adopted, and that the soldiers' accounts were to be rectified in that sense as from the Battle of the Alma. [135] See _Panmure_, vol. i. p. 356. IV