And it may seem to you some compensation for the enormous expense I cause you that, if I had not been here, it would not have been done. Would that Sidney Herbert could have lived to do it himself! Would that poor Clough could have lived to see it! He wished for it so much--for my sake.... [43] See Vol. I. p. 405. The high hopes which Miss Nightingale entertained from this slight reorganization were doomed to disappointment. Neither as Under-Secretary, nor after April 1863, when he became Secretary of State, did Lord de Grey manage, and I do not know that he seriously attempted, to reform the War Office root and branch.[44] He and Captain Galton had, according to Miss Nightingale, "miscalculated their power." She preached the necessity of reform to them unceasingly--in season and, as they may sometimes have thought, out of season too, for she was a very persistent person; and, with Dr. Sutherland's assistance, she provided them with detailed schemes. Her principles were as admirable, as was her criticism scathing when any breach of them came under her notice. There must in all things, she said, be a clear definition of responsibility, with a logical differentiation of functions; and the business of the War Office was to prepare for war--not to jog along with an organization which might hold together in peace, but would break down in the field. Some papers were submitted to her criticism (June 1862). "What strikes me in them," she wrote, "is the black ignorance, the total want of imagination, as to a state of _war_ in which the _War_ Office seems to be. Really if it was a Joint Stock Company for the manufacture of skins, it could not, as far as appears, be less accustomed to contemplate or to imagine or to remember a state of war." I am afraid that most of us have lived through times when the same criticism could have been made. Let us hope that it is all a matter of ancient history now. Papers were sent to her dealing with the questions of Purveying and Commissariat. The Commissariat had hitherto been the bankers of the army, and some of the permanent officials saw no reason for a change. From her experience in the Crimea she gave them the reason. The confusion of functions worked badly in the field.[45] As it was bound to do, for it was absurd. "Is a man who buys bullocks the best man to be a banker? Would it not be better to have a separate Treasurer for the Army to receive all moneys and issue them to all departments? In private life nobody makes his steward or butler his banker. It would not be economical. Finance is as much a specialty as marketing, and as much so, to say the least of it, in the Army as in private life." [44] There is a succinct account of organizations and reorganizations between 1854 and 1868 in a _Memorandum on the Organization of the War Office_ by Captain Galton, dated November 1868. [45] See Vol. I. p. 231. III