g,--commonly
the suffering of other people. The varied and elaborate returns, for
instance, now required of officers,--daily, monthly, quarterly,
annually,--are not one too many as regards the interests of Government
and of the soldiers, but are enough to daunt any but an accurate and
methodical man. A single error in an ordnance requisition may send a
body of troops into action with only twenty rounds of ammunition to a
man. One mistake in a property-voucher may involve an officer in
stoppages exceeding his yearly pay. One wrong spelling in a muster-roll
may beggar a soldier's children ten years after the father has been
killed in battle. Under such circumstances no standard of accuracy can
be too high. And yet even the degree of regularity that now exists is
due more to the constant pressure from head-quarters than to any
individual zeal. For a large part of this pressure the influence of the
regular army is responsible,--those officers usually occupying the more
important staff-positions, and having in some departments of service,
especially in the ordnance, moulded and remoulded the whole machinery
until it has become almost a model. It would be difficult to name
anything in civil life which is in its way so perfect as the present
system of business and of papers in this department. Every ordnance
blank now contains a schedule of instructions for its own use, so simple
and so minute that it seems as if, henceforward, the most negligent
volunteer officer could never make another error. And yet in the very
last set of returns which the writer had occasion to revise,--returns
made by a very meritorious captain,--there were eight different papers,
and a mistake in every one.

The glaring defeat of most of our volunteer regiments, from the
beginning to this day, has lain in slovenliness and remissness as to
every department of military duty, except the actual fighting and dying.
When it comes to that ultimate test, our men usually endure it so
magnificently that one is tempted to overlook all deficiencies on
intermediate points. But they must not be overlooked, because they
create a fearful discount on the usefulness of our troops, when tried by
the standard of regular armies. I do not now refer to the niceties of
dress-parade or the courtesies of salutation: it has long since been
tacitly admitted that a white American soldier will not present arms to
any number of rows of buttons, if he can by any ingenuity evade it; a