conference is now sitting and that no conclusion has yet been reached,
I withhold any recommendation as to legislation upon this subject.

The report of the Secretary of War brings again to the attention of
Congress some important suggestions as to the reorganization of the
infantry and artillery arms of the service, which his predecessors have
before urgently presented. Our Army is small, but its organization
should all the more be put upon the most approved modern basis. The
conditions upon what we have called the "frontier" have heretofore
required the maintenance of many small posts, but now the policy of
concentration is obviously the right one. The new posts should have the
proper strategic relations to the only "frontiers" we now have--those
of the seacoast and of our northern and part of our southern boundary.
I do not think that any question of advantage to localities or to States
should determine the location of the new posts. The reorganization and
enlargement of the Bureau of Military Information which the Secretary
has effected is a work the usefulness of which will become every year
more apparent. The work of building heavy guns and the construction of
coast defenses has been well begun and should be carried on without
check.

The report of the Attorney-General is by law submitted directly to
Congress, but I can not refrain from saying that he has conducted the
increasing work of the Department of Justice with great professional
skill. He has in several directions secured from the courts decisions
giving increased protection to the officers of the United States and
bringing some classes of crime that escaped local cognizance and
punishment into the tribunals of the United States, where they could
be tried with impartiality.

The numerous applications for Executive clemency presented in behalf
of persons convicted in United States courts and given penitentiary
sentences have called my attention to a fact referred to by the
Attorney-General in his report, namely, that a time allowance for good
behavior for such prisoners is prescribed by the Federal statutes only
where the State in which the penitentiary is located has made no such
provision. Prisoners are given the benefit of the provisions of the
State law regulating the penitentiary to which they may be sent. These
are various, some perhaps too liberal and some perhaps too illiberal.
The result is that a sentence for five years means one thing if the