for calling into service a volunteer force. The report of this board was desired immediately, and was therefore submitted on April 14. It was concerned principally with the employment of the volunteer and regular forces, and their concentration for organization and instruction." While partially meeting the emergency, this hurriedly framed report could not take the place of a well-defined plan for the organization and effective employment of the military forces. Inadequate equipment, lack of sufficient transportation facilities, inexperienced officers, and the absence of any authority to coördinate properly the work of the staff departments, resulted in many costly blunders, and greatly retarded the successful prosecution of the war.

Several acts were passed during the short period of the duration of this war providing for the organization and personnel of the staff departments." Especial mention should be made of the act of July 7, 1898, relating to the Quartermaster's Department, which authorized the Secretary of War, during the period of the war and not exceeding one year thereafter, to make a proper distribution of the duties of the Quartermaster's Department, and to assign a suitable officer to each of the divisions thus created."

Detail of Line Officers to Staff Departments. One of the most serious defects in the system of army organization was remedied by the act of February 2, 1901, entitled "An Act to increase the efficiency of the permanent military establishment of the United States." This act, which provided for the permanent organization of the staff departments, required that all future vacancies occurring in these departments, except that of the chief of the department, should be filled by detail from the line of the army. All officers so detailed were to serve for a period of four years and upon the expiration of that time to return to duty with the line; those below the rank of lieutenant-colonel not to be eligible for reappointment to a staff department until they had served two years with the line. The President was authorized to appoint, with the consent of the Senate, officers of the army at large not below the rank of lieutenant-colonel to vacancies occurring in the posi

39

40

Carter, op. cit., 206 et seq.

'Acts of May 18, July 1, July 5, and July 7, 1898 (30 stat. L., 419; 571; 652; 714; 715; 720); March 2, 1899 (30 Stat. L., 977).

42 30 Stat. L., 714.

tion of chief of any staff department, who should hold office for terms of four years. The above provisions, however, were not made applicable to the Engineer and Medical departments."

Prior to the passage of the act of 1901, assignments to positions in the staff departments were permanent, and the higher positions in each bureau were filled by the promotion of officers already in the bureau. This system tended to create a body of permanent administrative officers more or less out of touch with the spirit and requirements of the field forces, and caused them to forfeit the respect of the line of the army. President Monroe, under whose administration the staff departments were first organized upon a permanent basis, felt confident that the appointment of army officers as chiefs of these bureaus would be sufficient to keep alive a military spirit." Subsequent experience in military administration, however, had proved that a provision for the periodic return of staff officers to duty with the line was essential in maintaining a spirit of coöperation and sympathetic understanding between these two branches of the military department.

General Staff Corps; Office of Chief of Staff. An innovation of far-reaching importance with respect to the efficient administration of military affairs was introduced by the act of February 14, 1903, which established a General Staff Corps, with a Chief of Staff, who, under the direction of the President or the Secretary of War, should have supervision of all troops of the line and of the various staff departments. The General Staff Corps, which was to be composed of officers detailed from the army at large under rules prescribed by the President, was charged with the preparation of plans for the national defense and for the mobilization of the military forces in time of war, the investigation of all questions affecting the efficiency of the army and its state of preparation for military operations, the rendering of professional aid and assistance to the Secretary of War and to general officers and other superior commanders, and acting as their agents in informing and coördinating the action of all officers made subject by this act to the supervision

31 Stat. L., 748, 755. This innovation with respect to the personnel of the staff departments had been earnestly recommended by Secretary of War Root in his annual report for 1899. Cf. Five years of the war department, 1899-1903 (hereinafter cited as Five years "), 64.

42

Supra, 132.

of the Chief of Staff. All officers detailed to the General Staff Corps were to hold office for a period of four years, unless sooner relieved, and were made ineligible for further detail in that corps until they should have served two years with the branch of the army in which they were commissioned, except in case of emergency or in time of war.

This important legislation was the culmination of years of agitation upon the part of well-informed military men, but Congress was moved to action just at this time because of the disclosures made by the commission appointed by the President to investigate the conduct of the War Department in the war with Spain, and by the forceful recommendations made by Elihu Root, at that time Secretary of War. The commission, in its report, declared that "for many years the divided authority and responsibility in the War Department had produced friction, for which, in the interest of the service, a remedy, if possible, should be applied. The Constitution makes the President the Commander-in-Chief of the army, and he cannot transfer that authority to any other person. The President selects a Secretary of War, who is his confidential adviser. . . . The President must have the same power of selection of his General-in-Chief as he has of his Secretary of War; without this there can be no guarantee that he will give, or that the Secretary of War will place in the General-in-Chief, that confidence which is necessary to perfect harmony. Neither the President nor the Secretary of War should have in command of the army an officer who is not working in harmony with him."

Secretary Root, in his annual report for 1899, recommended the establishment of an Army War College, to be composed of the heads of the staff departments, together with a number of the ablest and most competent officers detailed for service therein, whose duty it should be to direct the instruction of the army, to acquire information, and to advise the Commander-in-Chief on questions of

44

56 Cong. I sess. (1899-1900), S. ex. doc. 221, 115. General Schofield, a prominent military commander during the Civil War, and successor to Edwin M. Stanton as Secretary of War, testified before the commission as follows: "Recent experience has served to confirm all of the results of my life-long study and large experience, that the proper position for the senior officer of the army on duty at Washington is not that of a Commanding General, a position which is practically impossible, but that of Generalin-Chief, which means in fact Chief of Staff to the President."

armament, transportation, and mobilization. He proposed to combine with the War College the existing Military Information Division of the Adjutant General's Department, and to entrust to its management all of the army service schools." An appropriation to meet the expenses connected with the establishment of an Army War College, having for its object "the direction and coördination of the instruction in the various service schools, extension of the opportunity for investigation and study in the army and militia of the United States, and the collection and dissemination of military information," was voted by Congress in an act of May 25, 1900." A War Department order issued on November 27, 1901, provided for the organization of a War College, under the direction. of a board of five officers, to be detailed from the army at large, and the following ex officio members: Chief of Engineers, Chief of Artillery, Superintendent of the United States Military Academy, and the commanding officer of the General Service and Staff College. Secretary Root, in commenting upon the organization of the War College, expressed the conviction that the establishment of such an institution and the duties imposed upon it was probably as near an approach to the organization of a General Staff as was practicable under the existing law. He therefore strongly urged upon Congress the establishment by law of a General Staff, of which the War College Board should form a part."

In his annual report for 1902, Secretary Root undertook a thorough analysis of the existing system of military administration, in order to convince Congress of the necessity for creating a General Staff Corps. "The most important thing to be done now for the Regular Army," declared the Secretary, "is the creation of a general staff. . . . Our system makes no adequate provision for the directing brain which every man must have to work successfully. Common experience has shown that this cannot be furnished by any single man without assistants, and that it requires a body of officers working together under the direction of a chief and en

"Five years, 62-63. The Military Information Division was created by General Orders 23, 1892, and placed in charge of an officer in the Adjutant General's department. Cf. Checklist, 1306.

**31 Stat. L., 191, 209. This appropriation was allowed to lapse, but a further appropriation was provided for the same object in the act of March 2, 1901.-31 Stat. L., 895, 903.

"Five years, 161, 165.

tirely separate from and independent of the administrative staff of an army. . . . .""The passage of the act of February 14, 1903, was due, in large measure, to the persistent efforts of the Secretary of War, aided by the testimony of experienced army officers, and was the culmination of a series of important reforms effected in the organization of the War Department, following the SpanishAmerican War.

Bureau of Insular Affairs. Several new administrative agencies in the War Department, which were established about this time, deserve to be noted. The vast amount of work imposed upon the War Department by the acquisition of insular possessions during the War with Spain made necessary the immediate establishment of an administrative division in the department to relieve the Secretary of War of the burden of details connected with the military occupation and later the building up of a system of civil goverment in those islands. Accordingly, a Division of Customs and Insular Affairs was created by order of the Secretary of War, issued on December 13, 1898. The title of this division was changed to the Division of Insular Affairs by order of the Secretary dated December 10, 1900. The name was again changed by act of July 1, 1902, which provided for a Bureau of Insular Affairs in the War Department, to have charge of all matters pertaining to civil government in island possessions of the United States subject to the jurisdiction of that department." Secretary Root, referring to the Division of Insular Affairs in his annual report for 1901, said: "It performs, with admirable and constantly increasing efficiency, the great variety of duties, which, in other countries, would be described as belonging to a colonial office, and would be performed by a much more pretentious establishment." "

Office of Chief of Artillery; Board of Engineers for Rivers and Harbors. The recommendation of Secretary Root as to the advisability of providing a head for the artillery branch of the army was embodied in the act of February 2, 1901, which provided for the organization of an Artillery Corps composed of two branchesthe coast artillery and the field artillery-and the selection by the