ecessity overrides all law.

This French report is well worth the study of our army-officers, of
all grades and classes, and I will only refer again, casually, to
another part, wherein it discusses the subject of military
correspondence: whether the staff-officer should correspond
directly with his chief in Paris, submitting to his general copies,
or whether he should be required to carry on his correspondence
through his general, so that the latter could promptly forward the
communication, indorsed with his own remarks and opinions. The
latter is declared by the board to be the only safe role, because
"the general should never be ignorant of any thing that is
transpiring that concerns his command."

In this country, as in France, Congress controls the great
questions of war and peace, makes all laws for the creation and
government of armies, and votes the necessary supplies, leaving to
the President to execute and apply these laws, especially the
harder task of limiting the expenditure of public money to the
amount of the annual appropriations. The executive power is
further subdivided into the seven great departments, and to the
Secretary of War is confided the general care of the military
establishment, and his powers are further subdivided into ten
distinct and separate bureaus.

The chiefs of these bureaus are under the immediate orders of the
Secretary of War, who, through them, in fact commands the army from
"his office," but cannot do so "in the field"--an absurdity in
military if not civil law.

The subordinates of these staff-corps and departments are selected
and chosen from the army itself, or fresh from West Point, and too
commonly construe themselves into the elite, as made of better clay
than the common soldier. Thus they separate themselves more and
more from their comrades of the line, and in process of time
realize the condition of that old officer of artillery who thought
the army would be a delightful place for a gentleman if it were not
for the d-d soldier; or, better still, the conclusion of the young
lord in "Henry IV.," who told Harry Percy (Hotspur) that "but for
these vile guns he would himself have been a soldier." This is all
wrong; utterly at variance with our democratic form of government
and of universal experience; and now that the French, from whom we
had copied the system, have utterly "proscribed" it, I hope that
our Congress will follow suit. I admit, in its fullest force,