The evening times., 1899-06-12
THE WAR DEPARTMENT.
Some Extraordinary Facts Brough
tn Public Notice.

| cOAhG kSANE1OEOI0aFX 0EOuRnu
| tn Public Notice.
New York. June 1.-THE Tribune"
prints the following under q Washington
line:
"At first the War Department brigadiers
vociferously denied that the troops in the
i field endured unnecessary hardships.
Eventually. however. the fact established
by two official Investigations was admitted.
and new line of defence was taken up.
What Of it, exclaimed the Secretary OF
War. If some Of the troops did suffer a
little unnecessarily, wasn't it glorious
victory?'
Then the volunteer staff officers were
charged with stupidity and ignorance and
even insubordination. Finally. the mis-
| management was mainly attributed to in
suihciency of>executive and clerical force.
Only within few weeks has Surgeon Cen
eral Sternberg repeated this assertion, and
also the original charge that volunteer
surgeons were the chief cause Of tine Med
ical Bureaus inefficiency
Both the War Department and Army
Register are. conclusive that there was
ample force. both commissioned and cleri-
cal, to carry forward the administrative
functions Of the bureaus, effectively. il
The department was in fact choked with
both. and overfOwed into rented quarters
Fifteen Of the staff officers were promoted
to the rank OF general and sent to COM
mand troops IN the field: in other words.
deliberately permitted to abandon the du-
ties to which they were trained.
But the department constantly worked
at cross purposes. Even before the vo'un-
teers were mObilized, perhaps stampeded
1t proceeded under the dangerous 'emer-
sency' pretext to add great numbers to its
already unwieldy clerical force. This ex-
aggerated conception OF the War Depart
ments requirements on u war footing
excited the amazement. not to say deris-
ion. of old attaches Of the Civil War days.
There is apparent an accelerated ton
dency recently to multiply cfiicss. not only
civilian. but military life-tenure places.
like those of General Ainsworth and Ma
Jor Tweedale. already discussed. Since the
Civil War several new bureaus have been
added to the department. Under the tu-
teiGge CT the staff chiefs. who control il
despotically. the War Department has
spread out into a great mushroom. 1t Is
overloaded with dead timber" and has
become an eyesOre OF extravaganza. 1t re-
Quires two men to do the work of one
American thirty five years ago. The quasi
military directors of the involved and fee
Die stan system, as editorially charged by
the Philadelphia Press lie entrenched be-
hind the United States Senate They make
1t careful practice to take care OF the
proteges Of the politicians Thus, Senator
Cockrell's son-in-law. at first quietly lip
ped into the department as a mere clerk,
soon developed into full-fiedged, life-ten-
ure major and Judge advocate under the
fostering care Of the Missouri Senator,
who wields 4 strong influence over its Cp-
erat:ons.
THE staff chiefs fully understand the
art of placating the lawmakers. and have
no hesitation in resorting to log rolling"
methods to do SO. An expensive result of
this ve-and-take' practice is the quar-
tering of large number of needy but
mainly useless male and female army rel
atives upon the department rolls.
In 1868. under the Administration of
Edwin NJ. Stanton. the year in which the
Civil War developed its greatest proper
tions. when, with a million men in arms,
he business of the National Government
was far more extensive and complicated
than ever before or since, the annual reg
lister of the War Department gave the fol-
lowing figures Of its civilian clerical force:
Y, ~