Ladies' Executive Committee.[124] Captain Galton and her cousin, Mr. Henry Bonham Carter, were sent early in the war to visit the hospitals of France and Germany; and when the war was over, the task of reporting upon the correspondence of the Society's agents and of the English doctors was entrusted to Dr. Sutherland.[125] Through all these personal connections, Miss Nightingale kept close touch with the Society's work. She thought that there was a lack of vigour at the start. Why, she wanted to know, did not the Society advertise itself more? "If it had been in hiding from its creditors instead of being an Aid Society, it could not have had a more complete success; if it had been sick and wounded itself, what could it have done less?" Its advertisement ought to appear every day "immediately above the Theatrical Announcements--with a list of articles wanted, and an acknowledgement of those received. It makes me mad to see advertisements only of the 'Voysey Defence Fund' and the 'Derby Memorial Fund.' What _does_ it matter whether Voysey is defended or not, and whether Lord Derby has a memorial or not?"[126] The Committee in reply hoped to do more presently; as it did--it collected nearly £300,000 and rendered a great deal of aid, both in France and in Germany. From the moment that the war was seen to be inevitable, Miss Nightingale had been deluged with correspondence. The French authorities applied to her for plans of temporary field hospitals. The Crown Princess of Prussia applied for assistance and advice in all sorts. "The dreaded letter has come," she wrote to Dr. Sutherland; "what _am_ I to answer; how to express sympathy with Prussia without alienating France?" Miss Nightingale's personal sympathies were rather on the French side. "I think," she wrote (Dec. 20), "that if the conduct of the French for the last three months had been shown by any other nation it would have been called _as it is_ sublime. The uncomplaining endurance, the sad and severe self-restraint of Paris under a siege now of three months would have rendered immortal a city of ancient Rome. The Army of the Loire fighting seven days out of nine barefoot, cold and frozen, yet unsubdued, is worthy of Henry V. and Agincourt. And all for what? To save Alsace and Lorraine, of which Paris scarcely knows." In writing to the Crown Princess on hospital matters she put in a plea for clemency in the hour of final victory. "Prussia would remember," she was sure, "the future wars and misery always brought about by trampling too violently on a fallen foe, and Germany will show to an astonished Europe that moderation of which victorious nations have hitherto shown themselves incapable." Miss Nightingale, here as in other matters, hoped more of human perfectibility than she was to find; the immediate future was to belie her picture alike of the severe self-restraint of Paris, and of the unexampled moderation of Prussia. In rendering aid to the sick and wounded she was, however,