two or more good engineers, and his
adjutant-general should exercise all the functions usually ascribed
to a chief of staff, viz., he should possess the ability to
comprehend the scope of operations, and to make verbally and in
writing all the orders and details necessary to carry into effect
the views of his general, as well as to keep the returns and
records of events for the information of the next higher authority,
and for history. A bulky staff implies a division of
responsibility, slowness of action, and indecision, whereas a small
staff implies activity and concentration of purpose. The smallness
of General Grant's staff throughout the civil war forms the best
model for future imitation. So of tents, officers furniture, etc.,
etc. In real war these should all be discarded, and an army is
efficient for action and motion exactly in the inverse ratio of its
impedimenta. Tents should be omitted altogether, save one to a
regiment for an office, and a few for the division hospital.
Officers should be content with a tent fly, improvising poles and
shelter out of bushes. The tents d'abri, or shelter-tent, carried
by the soldier himself, is all-sufficient. Officers should never
seek for houses, but share the condition of their men.

A recent message (July 18, 1874) made to the French Assembly by
Marshal MacMahon, President of the French Republic, submits a
projet de loi, with a report prepared by a board of French generals
on "army administration," which is full of information, and is as
applicable to us as to the French. I quote from its very
beginning: "The misfortunes of the campaign of 1870 have
demonstrated the inferiority of our system.... Two separate
organizations existed with parallel functions--the 'general' more
occupied in giving direction to his troops than in providing for
their material wants, which he regarded as the special province of
the staff, and the 'intendant' (staff) often working at random,
taking on his shoulders a crushing burden of functions and duties,
exhausting himself with useless efforts, and aiming to accomplish
an insufficient service, to the disappointment of everybody. This
separation of the administration and command, this coexistence of
two wills, each independent of the other, which paralyzed both and
annulled the dualism, was condemned. It was decided by the board
that this error should be "proscribed" in the new military system.
The report then goes on at great lengt