consistently impartial. Wherever she heard of good work being done, whether in France or in Germany, she was ready to help, and she gave disinterested advice to the nursing service in both armies. Throughout the war, she had a large correspondence both at home and with all sorts and conditions of people in France and Germany. [123] The letter is printed in the _Times_ of August 5, 1870. It was dated August 2, "the day," as Miss Nightingale noted in the letter, "of Sidney Herbert's death nine years ago." [124] She died in 1872--"such a genius for working for men," Miss Nightingale wrote of her, "so lovely, so loving, and so beloved." [125] _Report of the British National Society for Aid to the Sick and Wounded during the Franco-German War, 1871_, pp. 149-177. [126] Letters to Captain Galton, August 1870. At home, she was diligent in collecting money and gifts in kind for the Aid Society. She wrote constant letters and memoranda to members of the Executive Society; advising on all matters, from the general administration of field ambulances to the pattern of hospital suits, vetoing (when she could) impracticable suggestions, sending lists of the things most urgently needed. She received and answered a constant stream of applications from persons inquiring what to send, and from doctors and nurses wanting to volunteer for service. Abroad, her correspondence was on a similar scale. Distributing agents of the Society, nurses, workers of all kinds wrote, consulting her in cases of perplexity or giving information on points that they thought likely to interest her. The private reports preserved among Miss Nightingale's papers contain a mass of information about the treatment of the sick and wounded, of which she expressed the opinion that it far surpassed in horror, as of course it vastly exceeded in scale, anything that she had witnessed in the Crimea. Self-devotion on the part of volunteers, though it could not remedy the evils, was conspicuous in relieving them, and many letters to Miss Nightingale are eloquent of the inspiration which was derived from her example in the Crimea and from the messages of sympathy, encouragement and advice which she now sent. "Tell Miss Nightingale," said the warm-hearted Grand Duchess of Baden, "that I have endeavoured to follow implicitly everything she has recommended, and that I love and respect her more than any one in the world." There are letters, too, from English and German nurses and workers in which Miss Nightingale is addressed as "dearest of all friends" or "beloved mistress" and "queen." Her services to both of the belligerents were recognized by decorations. The French Société de Secours aux Blessés conferred its bronze cross upon her (July 1871), and from H.M. the Emperor and King she received the Prussian Cross of Merit (Sept.). But there was more significance in what she gave than in what she received. Among the English ladies who