due him is withheld. Were peace-pay allowed, each officer and man would have on pay day a sum to his credit against which could be charged the cost of military property lost or ruined while in his possession. This is not the case at present. Thousands of articles of uniform and equipment are annually lost or ruined, and the loss is usually borne by the unhappy officers, who often replace new missing articles with second-hand articles.

Bad as it is, the system of civil organizations is founded on a sound principle-that of no taxation without representation. Under the present system of payment of the expenses of the Guard, each soldier is a partner with the people, and naturally asks a partner's rights. It is perfectly just that he should have them. But it is preposterous that such principles should be at the very basis of a military system. There can be no proper discipline, no subordination or respect for superiors, in an organization in which the commanding officer and the private are business partners in the business of carrying on that organization.

III. The National Guard, reorganized as a National Volunteer Reserve, should be composed of Permanent Forces, stationed at schools of instruction, and the Active Reserve stationed at armories; and facilities for obtaining practical and theoretical instruction should be provided by the Government at schools of instruction, and staff colleges, through instruction by officers of the Army detailed to specific organizations, and through field service and manœuvres.

The Secretary of War should establish, in each military district, at a post or fort of the United States, a School of Instruction for officers and non-commissioned officers. To each school should be attached a corps of instructors detailed from among the officers or retired officers of the Army, or Volunteers. The officers at such schools, together with members of the Reserve specially enlisted for the purpose, should form a Permanent Corps at each school.

Appointment as a student at a School of Instruction should be made a reward of merit. The Adjutant-General of a Military District should annually publish in General Orders the names of officers and men appointed students for the ensuing year, adding commendation of the manner in which the appointees have performed their duties. No person should be appointed who has not been enlisted or commissioned for at least one year, and the

preference should be given to those with the longest service to their credit. After accepting appointments, students should be entitled to wear on the sleeve of the uniform coat the coat-ofarms of the United States or some other distinguishing badge. Students and members of the Permanent Corps at each school should, while in attendance, receive the same pay as officers and men of the Army; provided that they should be paid for each day of actual attendance, not by the month or week. Men of the permanent force should remain permanently at the fort or post, but students should not be required to attend continuously.

Staff Colleges may be considered a necessity. The staff officers of the Guard have generally been considered less efficient than those of the Line on account of lack of facilities for practical training in service. A Staff College should, therefore, be established at the Headquarters of each Military District, or at designated Military Posts of the Army in each Department. All staff officers of brigades, divisions and Army Corps of the Reserve should be required to attend at a Staff College for a stated period in each year.

All officers of the Army at present acting as Instructors in Schools or Military Colleges, and such other officers as the Secretary of War may detail, should be detailed to duty with the reorganized Guard, as instructors and officers. It is the experience of National Guard and Volunteer officers that the time spent in instructing boys in "Military Academies" or cadet organizations has been time wasted. The best results can be obtained by assigning officers to duty with specified organizations, not with the Headquarters of a State or District. Officers of the Army can acquire a knowledge of the special needs and temperament of volunteers only by taking an active part in the drills, instruction and social life of specific organizations.

Officers of the Army detailed to regiments of the Reserve, and appointed by the colonels thereof upon regimental staffs, would obtain an intimate knowledge of their regiments and would have authority to make suggestions, correct faults and instruct officers and men. There should therefore be attached to the staff of each regiment of the Reserve an officer, or retired officer, of the Army designated "Inspector," and with rank and pay during service with the Reserve of one grade higher than his Army grade.

Such Inspector should preside at Schools of Instruction and VOL. CLXX.-NO. 522.

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Boards of Examination, should give to the officers of the regiment in council his criticisms of drills and the condition of books and papers, and should be permitted to suggest any drills, lectures or courses of instruction which in his judgment are necessary. He should have quarters assigned to him in the armory of the regiment to which he is detailed. He should be assisted by non-commissioned officers of the Army designated "Sergeant Instructors" and attached to the non-commissioned staff. These should serve as armorers and janitors of armories.

There should be little difficulty in doing away with the present system of Camps of Instruction and substituting therefor practice marches and field manoeuvres. The drill schedule might, with advantage, include, in May, out-door drills on Saturday afternoons, by company, companies marching to and from drill-ground; in June, practice marches from Friday afternoon to Monday morning, by battalion; in July, practice marches of one week by regiment; in September or October, field exercises by brigade.

Practice marches would not only be of great practical value in familiarizing officers and men with road-marching, but would also, by familiarizing the people with the soldiery, aid recruiting and foster a spirit of pride in our Volunteer Reserve. It is an almost invariable experience that, when a body of troops, Regular or Volunteer, marches through outlying country districts in this country, their march soon becomes a sort of triumphal progress, and that recruiting in those districts is stimulated.

IV. The National Guard reorganized as a Volunteer Reserve should not be required to perform military service without the boundaries of the United States; nor should any Army Corps be required to perform service without the Army Corps District in which it is raised.

Members of the National Guard are business men and professional men dependent upon civil occupations for their livelihood and that of their families. It is wholly unreasonable to expect them to sacrifice their business interests, and inflict hardships upon their creditors and families by abandoning business to go with their organizations to different points in America or foreign countries. A citizen-soldier has never been required or expected in any land, at any time, to do this; but here a member of the National Guard is goaded by a perverted public sentiment into doing something which common sense tells him is wrong.

Many citizens feel deeply the injustice of the present system of transforming the National Guard into United States Volunteers, and if members of the Guard they take out their discharges as soon as they can do so with honor; if not in the Guard, they decline to enlist, and a struggle to obtain recruits is constantly in progress. There should be no difficulty in obtaining a million men as recruits from a male population of militia ages which in 1890 was 13,230,168, and is now much larger. As it is, only one recruit for 2,566 inhabitants is obtained annually for the Guard, and the recent war has shown that in seventy-five cases out of a hundred the recruit thus obtained is not one who will be accepted by an Army surgeon. If we are to have a National Volunteer Reserve, we must obtain recruits, and if we are unable to induce citizens desirable as recruits to enlist if the nature of the contract we ask them to make is not to their liking, we can do only one thing-namely, offer a contract which they will make.

V. The National Guard system of drill and instruction should be so modified that the interest of the enlisted man in his work shall be increased, and that officers and men may familiarize themselves with the duties that they may be required to perform in the field in the time of war.

The National Guardsman of the present day is much more efficient when in State service than when in the service of the United States. And this is so because in time of peace he comprehends why he receives an order, and he obeys it understandingly. The drill programme, the ceremonies, the rifle practice, the camp duty are, like the laws of the Medes and Persians, unchangeable. Every duty is prescribed in orders with minute exactness. But when the Guardsman becomes a Volunteer, the conditions are different. The soldier must obey blindly, without knowing or asking reasons for orders; he must be prepared to do things he has not been warned he is to do; he must drill and fight with men he never saw, and obey orders he does not understand. He does not do so cheerfully, for a volunteer is a "thinking bayonet," and his hesitancy is a bad fault. But he is not as much to blame as the system which has made him what he is, a victim of "the eternal fours right."

The system of instruction adopted generally in the Guard is one which is monotonous and uninteresting.

At the beginning of each drill season the average company,

goes back to the A B C of drill, and, no matter how many experienced men may be in the ranks, becomes for the time being a recruit squad. Evening after evening, week after week, is devoted to drill in the manual of arms, and simple movements; and three months pass before extended order drill or battalion drills are taken up. But there is little instruction in the duties of guards and sentinels; none whatever, except in rare instances, in pitching or striking tents, or cooking. The marching is all done on a smooth armory floor. Few captains can spare time for settingup drill or physical exercise drill. When summer comes and organizations go to camp, little difference is made in the drill programme.

Many States permit recruits to go to camp, and they must be instructed. Accordingly, the company drills and battalion drills, in close and extended order, are resumed. Guard duty now receives much attention, and there are guard mounts and dress parades every day. But the course of instruction is otherwise much the same as when the men are in armories in winter. The result is that men who have drilled year after year become wearied and disgusted; and only a strong sense of duty forces them to attend drills and camp regularly. They are eager and willing to learn something new. There are few Guardsmen who do not wish to know how to pitch and strike wall and conical tents, draw rations and cook them, march on the road with advance and rear guards, throw out outposts and pickets, and construct hasty entrenchments. But they are seldom permitted to know much about these subjects. Even rifle practice is frowned upon.

Evening drills should be restricted to such drills as are necessary in order to give recruits, squads of recruits and the company a thorough knowledge of elementary principles. In weather when out-door marching is possible without acute discomfort, the company or battalion should be marched four or five miles in the open air, in order that the men may be taught to have on hand their campaign outfit, may learn to march carrying loads properly adjusted, and may be relieved from the monotony of continual drill in a large room. Every evening drill should include (1.) fifteen minutes of physical exercise drill, without blouses, caps or braces (if drill be held in an armory); (2.) fifteen minutes of drill in aiming and position, and the loadings and firings. Battalion and regimental drills in armories should not be