It was not Miss Nightingale's fault that this plea for expedition was necessary. In December 1863 Lord de Grey had again asked her to draft a letter to the India Office, as from the War Office, on the measures recommended by the Royal Commission, and she had done it. But days, weeks, months passed, and nothing happened. In January 1864 her "Suggestions in regard to Sanitary Works required for the Improvement of Indian Stations,"[31] written at the urgent request of the Governor-General, were ready, Dr. Sutherland, Dr. Farr, and Mr. Rawlinson collaborating with her. Again months passed and nothing happened. The Barrack and Hospital Improvement Committee had been officially informed in December of the appointment of the Indian members, and requested to report on any matters which might be referred to it by the Secretary for India or the Secretary for War; but as yet no Indian reference had been made. Miss Nightingale chafed sorely at the needless delay. The Governor-General wrote to her again and again pressing for the Suggestions. She had done her part long ago; the War Office had been in possession of her Draft for months. She tried plain pressure, and pressure barbed with sarcasm. "Poor man!" she wrote in forwarding to the War Office one of the Governor-General's letters (March 10); "he really expects despatch. He thinks we can write a letter in three months! He must be more fit for a Lunatic Asylum than for a Governor-Generalship." Or, when the Government had been having a close division in the House,[32] she tried to play the India Office against the War Office. "You will all be 'out' this session," she wrote to the War Office (March 7, 1864); "after which I shall be able to get what I like from Lord Stanley [I.O.], but _you_ will not be able to get what you like from Gen. Peel [W.O.]. It is therefore very desirable that this letter should be written now at once while you are still 'in.'" It turned out that the reason of the delay was this: the War Office _had_ sent a preliminary letter to the India Office, and the India Office resented it. Sir Charles Wood, it was explained to Miss Nightingale, had "snubbed" Lord de Grey. The War Office was sulking in its tents accordingly. The India Office, on its part, was standing on its dignity, and was not going to place itself in the humiliating position of taking action proposed to it by the War Office. And this was the reason why Miss Nightingale's Suggestions, for which the Governor-General was asking, were still pigeon-holed. As for minor recommendations in the Royal Commission's Report, it was quite true that many of them could be carried out by administrative order, and some of them were; but the difficulty in the case of others was that it had hitherto passed the wit of man to discover with whom the power, or the responsibility, of making the order lay. Well may Miss Nightingale have written, as she did in more than one letter of this time (Jan. 1864): "No impression in all my