Letter to Jane Senior
1871-04-05

[Page 1 of 11]
35 South Street,
Park Lane,
W.
April 5/71
My dear Madam
I cannot thank you enough
for letting me see the enclosed
admirable paper.
Like everything the writer
does, it is capital.
Her account of the "Johanniter"
is clear & masterly. And I can
bear out her statement, from
a great amount of private
correspondence, that the
campaign of the Red Cross
was in fact a campaign against
the Johanniter (for the Patient).
As Mr. Gladstone said of
the Bourbon Neapolitan rule:
Mrs. Nassau Senior
[Page 2 of 11]
the Government is itself the
conspriator against order -
so I say of the "Johanniter",
it was they themselves conspired
against the Patients & Hospitals
& won in too many cases.
[To Question 19, I should therfore
answer: God forbid.]
The moment that practical
action, by practical English
men & women is subordinated
to any foreign bureaucratic
element, that moment its
efficiency will cease.
The Johanniter are essentially
an aristocratic or princely Bureau.
[Page 3 of 11]
But I do not speak of them
alone - All Prussian authority
is a Bureau.
[English people can have no idea
(who have not lived in Prussian
Institutions) what this means
in every detail of life - what
 it means to be without the
free Parliamentary element
where every body, especially
every Public Office may be
called to give an account of
what they have done - what
it means to be without the
free Public press of Public
opinion element which
would make anything like
the normal treatment of
Prussian Wounded perfectly
impossible among us - as was
shown by the Crimean War -
where too the abnormally bad
[Page 4 of 11]
Hospitals of the beginning were
infinitely superior to the
normal Prussian
Hosptials all through this War.]
There is a strong bureaucratic
element in the French too - of course
 - yes, even or principally (do not
think me censorious) among
Soeurs de Charite.
But, from many considerations
too long to trouble you with,
it does not work against the
welfare of Patients & sufferers
to anything like the same degree
that it does under Prussian
rule. (And French War Hospitals are
always better than German.)
My object however here is
simply to bear out what
this masterly investigation
evidently points at:
that, if an English Red Cross Society
is to be subordinated in it's
action to any foreign Gods'
bureaucratic ways, it is lost - 
[Page 5 of 11]
2
35 South Street,
Park Lane,
W.
 - it may as well not exist.
[I have no preconcieved theory
on this subject - as to how the
essential connection is to be
made between belligerent
authorities & neutral (or
indeed belligerent) Red Cross
Societies.
On the contrary -
I was waiting for the [illegible]
amount of information
(which must be at the
command of St. Martin's Place)
to settle this point of primary,
first rate importance.
But to bring out conclusions & expiernece: public opinion
must now be called in in every
way - public opinion along
can right the Red Cross ship.
Every kind of criticism must
be invoked.]
[Page 6 of 11]
2. These answers show, as
well as much else similar
experience, that, so far as
Prussia was concerned, she
threw her sick & Wounded
on the Red Cross for the
"Johanniter" to manage
 and -- to neglect - and to
lend themselves to Government
(not Hospiral) purposes.
The French, poor wretches, were
more on honour. Andt  they have
more a notion of what
Hospitals ought to be.
3. I could very much have
wished to suggest to you
to ask the writer of these
admirable remarks
to put down under her
head "Nurses" some clear
& brief Resume which
she is so well able to do
[Page 7 of 11]
as to the action of the "Soeurs de
Charite" (as she has done
with regard to that of the
Johanniter.)
I have seen experience of hers
with regard to the "Soeurs"
which I echo with the whole
force of my experience,
personal & acquired.
[And no Protestant can have had
the personal experience of
their working I have had.]
I will not trouble you unless
you ask me, with this -
I will only say 1. I was
greatly disappointed not to
find anything about them
in the (returned) paper -
2. everything I have learnt
from private, impartial
female observers during this
War confirms my past
experience -
[Page 8 of 11]
And I will add that the
experience of the (first-rate)
Administration of the Assistance
Publique at Paris is so exactly
the same that, for many
years, no Paris Hospital
except the "Necker", admits
"Soeurs de Charite" as Nurses.
The Augustinans & Soeurs de
St. Marthe are entrusted
with the Nursing of all the
(Civil) great Paris Hospitals - &
them alone - to which
distinction I give my most
emphatic concurrence.[This is not to say that
"Soeurs de Charite" are not to
recieve English gifts. It is
only to say that English gentlemen
taken by their nice white capes
good manners, & orderly
apperance know very little
of what is going on
in the Patients' region].
I have seen the best French doctors, "tearing their hair",
et pour cause, at the Soeurs doings - exactly as the
"tearing the hair" at the Johanniter's doings is here
described. 
[Page 9 of 11]
3
35 South Street,
Park Lane,
W.
4. There are excellent things
in the paper about Nurses.
But I do not agree with all
the conclusions - that is to say,
my experience differs from
the writer's in some things.
Also: she does not at all
enter into the question of
language - [illegible] imporant (&
difficult to find) among
Surgeons, how much more
important(& difficult to
find) among Nurses -
especially among "Trained Nurses"
Also: I do not quite agree
with her distinction between
"Sick" & "Wounded". "Severely
Wounded" require even more
the hourly spoonful during the
night, & all the rest of it,
than any, but the worst Sick.
And no well-trained London
Hospiral women but has had
[Page 10 of 11]
the experience (in the "Accident"
Ward) to do it. [A really trained
London "Surgical" Nurse is
the first in the world.]
Also: I do not quite agree with
the distinction she draws
between "Field Lazareths"
& others. She has probably
not had the opportunity of
knowing that some of the
very best work done
during the War was done
in the "Field Lazareths" before
Metz. And this by and
English lady whom I am
proud to call my pupil.
This leads to another question: -
will the best women enlist
or "register" under a "Society" -
- a Society of which the heads
necessarily know little or
nothing about Hospitals? &
where they may be called upon to
serve under a [illegible]?
I don't know
[illegible] is against experience that they will. 
[Page 11 of 11]
But, if I were to go into that,
I should be forced to write as
long a paper as the one
enclosed.
I return with "honour [illegible]"
the paper, tho' I should
much has liked to keep it
another day.
And I apologize for the
length of this letter which
I could have made much longer.
With repeated thanks
ever your faithfully and gratefully
Florence Nightingale