Volume 1

The life of Florence Nightingale. Vol. II (1862-1910) / Sir Edward Cook.

  • Cook, Sir Edward Tyas, 1857-1919.
Date:
1913
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The life of Florence Nightingale. Vol. II (1862-1910) / Sir Edward Cook. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

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    place is not to be filled up. Galton is to do his work as Assistant Under-Secretary. This brings with it some other reforms. Lord de Grey says that he can reorganize the War Office with Captain Galton, because Sir G. Lewis will know nothing about it and never inquires. Sir G. Lewis wrote it (innocently) to the Queen yesterday, and Captain Galton was appointed to-day, resigning the Army of course. No, Sir Charles Trevelyan would not have done at all [in Hawes's place]. It would have been perpetuating the principle (which I have been fighting against in all my official life, i.e., for eight years) of having a dictator, an autocrat, irresponsible to Parliament, quite unassailable from any quarter, immovable in the middle of a (so-called) constitu- tional government, and under a Secretary of State who is re- sponsible to Parliament. And, inasmuch as Trevelyan is a better and abler man than Hawes, it would have been worse for any reform of principle. I don't mean to say that I am the first person who has laid down this. But I do believe I am the first person who has felt it so bitterly, keenly, constantly as to give up life, health, joy, congenial occupation for a thankless work like this. ... It has come too late to give happiness to Galton, as it has come too late for me. He seems more depressed than pleased. And I do believe, if he feels any pleasure, it is that now he can carry out Sidney Herbert's plans in some measure. 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. . . . The high hopes which Miss Nightingale entertained from this slight reorganization were doomed to disappoint- ment. 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.1 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 1 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.
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