The charges and counter-charges of proselytism were referred by the chaplains to the Secretary of State. Lord Panmure, in reply (April 27, 1855), had "to say in the first place, that he has perused the correspondence with great regret, and that he deeply laments to find that religious differences have arisen to such an extent as to mar the united energies and labours of those who are devoting themselves with such disinterestedness and heroic courage and success to the relief of the sick and wounded." The Minister then proceeded to promulgate instructions designed to prevent any proselytism by the nurses and Sisters. Unfortunately, his dispatch was so worded as to make things, from Miss Nightingale's point of view, no better, but rather worse. "The instructions," she wrote to Lady Canning (Sept. 9, 1855), "have been so completely misunderstood that they have been my principal difficulty. The R.C.'s who before were quite amenable have chosen to construe the rule that they 'are not to enter upon the discussion of religious subjects with any patients other than those of their own faith,' to mean therefore with _all_ of their own faith, and the second party of nuns who came out now wander over the whole Hospital out of nursing hours, not confining themselves to their own wards, nor even to patients, but 'instructing' (it is their own word) groups of Orderlies and Convalescents in the corridors, doing the work each of ten chaplains, and bringing ridicule upon the whole thing, while they quote the words of the War Office." Lady Canning, who was at this time acting as Miss Nightingale's agent for the enlistment of nurses, had proposed to embody Lord Panmure's instructions in the printed Rules and Regulations. Miss Nightingale begged her to do no such thing. I doubt not that Miss Nightingale's own verbal instructions were less ambiguous. She was one who never failed to say exactly what she meant. IV A great obstacle with which Miss Nightingale's work in the East had to contend throughout was the scarcity at the time of properly trained nurses. She had long ago formed a resolve to remedy this defect; the seriousness of it was still further enforced upon her mind by painful experience in the Crimean War; and her resolve was the more strengthened. The religious difficulty--demanding that nurses should be selected, to some extent, not _qua_ nurses, but _qua_ sectarians--accentuated the obstacle of inadequate training, which, however, would in any case have existed. The case is excellently put, in terms which doubtless reflect Miss Nightingale's own views, in a letter from Lady Verney to Mrs. Gaskell (May 17, 1855):--