Year: 1876

pursuing the even tenor of its way In Washington letter of March Is

 the correspondent of The Herald t among many other suggestions 3 throws out the following:

 ? If the War Department desires t s cut down useless expenses and at th, same time increase the usefulness ot

 the line of the army, let it begin 6 wedding process, the result of which ) will give to each regiment not only :, its complement of officers, as at pres

 ent, but let each and every one of these officers be men who are phys

 icslly and mentally able to discharge

 in an efficient manner the duties which ! pertain to their particular office. As

 1t Is now there Is scarcely regiment

 but, like some of the staff depart

 Inents, Is loaded down with dead

 weight in the shape of officers who,

 from age, drunkenness or some other

 equally potent cause, are disqualified

 from full and proper discharge of

 their duties. Many of the colonels

 of regiments and captains of con-

 panies are men who do not pretend to

 discharge their appropriate duties.

 Some are given what Is termed soft

 places" the object of which is to en-

 able them to draw full pay and prac-

 tically escape duty. If they are

 incompetent from any cause to perform

 the duties which properly belong to

 their office they should be displaced,

 by retirement or otherwise, and active, efficient officers placed ill their stead.

 With an army so reduced as ours 1t isl essential to its efficiency that every 1 officer in 1t Is capable of performing every duty belonging to his grade.

 Another promising field of inquiry for Congressional committee would be the expenditures of the Ordnancet Department, particularly as to the amount of money squsndered upon officer quarters and about arsenals. It would be found that there are several instances in which more money has been spent in the erection of quarters for single officer of low rank in the ordnance than would Do necessary to build complete post for an entire garrison on the frontier. These ex- pensive and extrsvsgantly devised quarters are built at the public ex- pense only to be occupied, in some cases. for few years and then abandoned or sold for trife of their original cost. The Ordnance corps IS becomlngl SO large and the officers so numeroust that 1t is impossible to give the latter employment. To partially obviate this difficulty the Idea has oc- { cured to distribute some of the officers the country at the different where they are of about IS much real service as 80 many chap aims. If the duties which are now ] distributed among the sixty or seventy ordnance officers were given to one ourth that number the government would insure 0 more efficient service, - )e spared the expense of maintaining be other three-fourths, and would lot be called upon each year for an ap- of hundreds of thousandsI lollars Ill order that something might 'e found to occupy portion of the time f this large number of officers which therwise must be passed in idleness. t has been said that the duties of an rdnance officer, or the lack of them, Iave tendency to produce insanity. his can scarcely be said to be wholly rue, as several of the officers of this ranch of the service are still in pos T ession of the mental faculties with ] which they originally entered the eryice. It Is somewhat suggestive, owever, that with one brigadier gen. ral, three colonels, four lieutenant T olonels and an indefinite number of ther grades i'll the Ordnance corps, 1t as been deemed necessary for years ) place the most important arsenal i'll ne entire country under command of ne of the junior officers of that corps. f nine-tenths of the Ordnance corps 7ere plotted from official existence 6 ngle, capable. energetic officer, with gal progressive ideas, would alone F Il the blnak now filled by so many. Is not that the officers of this corps ere not originally endowed, at least N lost of them, with Q fair share of atural intelligence, nor that they did ot cultivate these abilities; but it is C imply due to trust" from mental in- V otivity.