d stores are under the charge of the Commissariat, not of
the Staff, and that the Department in question engages the men who are
hired to take care of it, and has exclusive authority over them.

Lord Raglan transmitted to the Duke of Newcastle, in the month of
December, the report of a Medical Board, which he caused to assemble
at Constantinople for the purpose of ascertaining the state of health
of the Duke of Cambridge. The report evidently showed the necessity of
His Royal Highness's return to England for its re-establishment.
This, Lord Raglan knows, was the opinion of the Honourable
Lieutenant-Colonel Macdonald,[4] whose attention and devotion to
His Royal Highness could not be surpassed, and who was himself very
anxious to remain with the Army.

The Duke, however, has not gone further than Malta, where, it is said,
his health has not improved.

[Footnote 4: The Hon. James Bosville Macdonald [1810-1882],
son of the third Baron Macdonald, A.D.C., Equerry and Private
Secretary to the Duke of Cambridge.]

[Pageheading: THE ARMY BOARD]

_Queen Victoria to the Earl of Aberdeen._

WINDSOR CASTLE, _22nd January 1855._

The Queen has received Lord Aberdeen's letter of yesterday, giving an
account of the proceedings of the last Cabinet....

The Queen is quite prepared to sanction the proposal of constituting
the Secretary of State for War, the Commander-in-Chief, the
Master-General of the Ordnance, and the Secretary at War, a Board on
the affairs of the Army, which promises more unity of action in
these Departments, and takes notice of the fact that the powers and
functions of the Commander-in-Chief are not to be changed. As these,
however, rest entirely on tradition, and are in most cases ambiguous
and undefined, the Queen would wish that they should be clearly
defined, and this the more so as she transacts certain business
directly with him, and ought to be secured against getting into any
collision with the Secretary of State, who also takes her pleasure,
and gives orders to the Commander-in-Chief. She would further ask to
be regularly furnished with the Minutes of the proceedings of the new
Board, in order to remain acquainted with what is going on.

Unless, however, the Militia be made over to the direction of the
Secretary of State for _War_, our Army system will still remain very
incomplete. The last experience has shown that the Militia will have
to be looked upon as the chief source f