Miss Nightingale took the matter up at once. She put the case into form, and submitted it, through Sir Harry Verney, to the Secretary for War, Mr. Childers, who promised to look into it. Presently he called for a report on hospital nursing by orderlies, and in August the Departmental answer was forwarded to Miss Nightingale. "I have seen such answers," she wrote,[197] "at the Crimean war time. 'The patient has died of neglect and want of proper attendance; but by Regulations should not have died; therefore the allegation that he is dead is disposed of.'" In this case the allegations were not disposed of, as we shall hear presently. [197] To Captain Galton, August 21, 1880. Early in May General Gordon left England as private secretary to Lord Ripon, and before starting he sent one of his "little books of comfort" to Miss Nightingale. He resigned the incongruous appointment almost as soon as he had reached India, and after a special mission in China returned to England. He saw Miss Nightingale and announced his intention of going to Syria. Miss Nightingale upbraided him. His past claimed more of his future than a tour of curiosity in the East. Why should he not return to India in an unofficial character? She could tell him of much work to do there:-- (_General Gordon to Miss Nightingale._) SOUTHAMPTON, _April_ 4 [1881]. You have written most kindly and far too highly of me, for I find no responding tone in my heart to make me claim such praise. I will explain exactly how I am situated. I consider my life done, that I can never aspire to or seek employment, when one's voice must be stilled to some particular note; therefore I say _it_ is done, and the only thing now left to me is to drift along to its natural end and in the endeavour to do what little good one may be able to do. Syria is, to me, no land of attraction, all lands are indifferent. I go for no desire of curiosity, but simply because it is a quiet land and a land where small means can do much good. That is all my reason for going there. I would have gone to the Cape. I would have gone to India as you suggest, but I would never do so if I had to accept the shibboleth of the Indian or Colonial official classes.... My life is truly to me a straw, but I must live. Would that it could go to give you and all others the sense that they are all risen in Christ even now, even if it was at the cost of my eternal existence--such is the love I have for my fellow-creatures, but the door is shut. I cannot live in England; for though I have many many millions in my Home, I am only put on short allowance here, tho' it is ample for me with my wants. I cannot visit the sick in London: it is too expensive. I can do so in Syria, and where the sick are, there is our Lord. I would do anything I could for India, but I feel sure my advent there would not be allowed.