Lancaster daily intelligencer. [volume] (Lancaster, Pa.) 1864-1928, 1882-08-01
aa,lcaster fmtelliQencer.
TUESDAY EVENING. AUGUST 1. lse2
The RetIrenerf Law.

TUESDAY EVENING. AUGUST 1, lse2.
The Retirement Law.
The United States attorney general
decides that the new law which retires
all officers of the army at the age of
sixty-four, not only opens the retired
list to them, Notwithstanding its maxi
mum of four hundred is exceeded, but
causes them to crowd out of this limited
retired list officers who are disabled in
the service and who, under existing laws,
wonld be retired for that disability. The
retired list will not be open to such off.
GERS until those who now enter it be-
cause Of their age die rapidly enough to
reduce the over.full list below four hun.
dred /; if that time ever comes.
This is not an encouraging prospect to
young officers: The hope of promotion
which caused them to so heartily favor
the retirement of their elders is all gone.
Promotion comes no more rapidly than
before the old cripples 60 out but the
full as ever and promotion as disgust
ingly slow; and disgustingly slow
it certainly is in these piping
times of peace. We can hardly un-
derstand how an active and ambitious
young man can content himself in SER
vice where his ambition is so poorly re-
warled. Doubtless, if it was not for the
hope that things will some day take a
turn for the better, the army would be
left in possession of the dsOnes who are
content to live their life with nothing to
do and something to wear. 1t is not a
good thing for the country tEat its rest
less and aspiring officers should he driven
from their profession by its emptiness
of honor and rewards. Rank is not a
very. substantial thing, but it is a very
effective reward to soldier, and an
army is not in healthy condition while
it is not awarded as stimulus to exer-
tiOn.
II is not a very good practice to
cause it to lie earned by seniority
alone. An officer does not deserve to be
rewarded simply for growing old in the
service, unless he likewise grows in ex.
perience and capacity. The presumption
is that age brings these though it is
often, if not generally, false presump-
tion. promotion could be awarded
always for desert there would be no just
complaint of its slOwness; for the deserv-
ing are not over abundant. Theywould go
UP rs fast as their hearts could wish while
the undeserving st;.id behind and they
would have no cause to complain of
their being left. If they did not like it
they could resign and leave a service for
which they were not fitted. 1t is strange
that this sensible way of offering an
ARMY seems to be impracticable. Pro-
molten is made to depend on seniority
and 10 one is retired who is sound in
mind and limb and under sixty four
years Nf age. These are not the only nor
the best causes for wedding an army.
Everyone knows of men weak in body
and aged. who are more fit to lead other
men than those younger and physically
more capable. 1t is the soldierly capac-
ity that should he sought for and re-
wardc'l in an army officer. lie does not
need to be crammed with the learning of
books ; lie does not need to graduate
with Il high number at West Point.
Such acquisitions do very we'll for
engineers and topographers. Hut good
lJs ..c IL -,
they are men like Jackson, Sheridan,
Grant, Custer, Morgan, &C.: not partic-
ularly bright, but prompt, decided, ell
ergetic and ambitious.
Such men are kept in an army best by
such recOmpense as promotion poor
enough in intrinsic value, but full of
satisfaction to their spirit, which feeds
best on the bauble, glory. Men like these
are not SO rewarded in the army now. A
few days ago, in list Of promotions, we
noticed the names of four lieutenants
who had just been made captains &c for
fourteen years of uninterrupted service''
as lieutenants in which rank they had
probably served for nearly rs many years
before.
Think of an officer being advanced al
forty or forty-five to the command of
company of u hundred or so, 1t would
do for a dunghill but what would you
predicate Of the dash, enterprise and dar-
ing Of man content with such life
reward Ii there WAS any good in him
worth having by the country he would
have been out of that long ago.
General De Russey has just been
made Il colonel rs he is about to step out
into the retired list and General Weitzel,
who was a major general of distinction
twenty years ago, only now blooms into
a lieutenant colonel.
There is no sense in a system which
keeps unfit men in Office in any position
in a country. We ought not to have
them in the civil or the military service.
In the first we get them from unfit ap-
pointments /; in the last, from unfit pro-
motions. Civil service reformers think
that they would cure all the evils of the
present civil service by making its offices
to be filled like those of the
army, which are now political and