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The co-operation of our Aid Societies in extending information concerning the various agencies of the Commission for the relief and aid of discharged soldiers and their families will constitute another important service which they may render.

Some of these agencies are of a character which will not terminate with the disbanding of our armies, but will find their largest field of activity and usefulness during the year succeeding the close of the war.

Tbe Commission is rapidly extending its system of Claim Agencies to all the prinicipal cities and centers of population throughout the country. Through these agencies all claims of soldiers or sailors and their families are adjusted with the least possible delay and without charge, thus securing to the applicants the full amount of the claim as allowed, and exemption from the heavy tax, and often gross imposition and fraud, to which they are subjected by the ordinary methods. The evils to which the discharged soldier is exposed in the adjustment of claims against the Government are of so grave a nature that no effort should be spared to secure to him the benefits of this agency of the Commission's work. Regarding the Local Aid Societies as the natural guardians of the soldiers and the supervisors of the work of the Commission in their respective towns or cities, it is desired that they will exercise a careful superintendence of this work, promoting by every practicable means its efficiency, and making sure that every returned soldier in their vicinity and the family of every deceased soldier is actually informed of the aid gratuitously offered them by this agency of the Commission.

The maintenance of the organization of our Aid Societies will preserve to the Sanitary Commission the means of communicating with the people, from time to time, upon such topics as concern the continued welfare of returned soldiers, and especially in regard to the more permanent provision which it will be necessary to make for disabled soldiers, incapable of self-support. It is the profound conviction of the Sanitary Commission, that the peculiar genius and beauty of American intitutions is to show itself in the power which the ordinary civil, social, and domestic life of the nation exbibits to absorb rapidly into itself our vast army, and restore to ordinary occupations those who have been fighting our battles; while the sick and wounded are distributed through the country, objects of love, care, and restoration, in the several communities where they belong, instead of being collected in great State and national asylums, objects of public ostentation, and subjected to the routine, the isolation, and the ennui of an exceptional, unfruitful, and unhappy existence. Public provision of this latter kind, as free from its evil as may be, must be made for a certain small class of the friendless and the totally disabled; but humanity and American feeling demand that this class should be reduced to the smallest possible number through the zeal and friendliness shown towards our returning invalid soldiers in the towns from which they originally came. The Sanitary Commission will soon lay before its Branches and the public plans for such asylums for disabled and discharged soldiers as it may be necessary to establish.

Reserving the expression of our gratitude to our Branches and Soldiers' Aid Societies to a later period, we remain, on behalf of the Board,

Yours, faithfully and truly,
H.W. BELLOWS, President
JNO. S. BLATCHFORD, General Secretary