Page:Hine (1912) Letters from an old railway official.djvu/78

 civil affairs. Be that as it may, the organization was elastic enough to meet just such variations of personal equation. Whether the President, the Secretary of War or the adjutant general (chief of staff) acted in a particular case, the subordinate knew who took the responsibility and that the action came from a real superior in rank.

The Confederacy fell. The passions of the time, the shortsightedness of prejudice, precluded the adoption at that time by the United States of any feature of the Confederate organization, however meritorious in principle and practice. It remained for the Germans, already applying the idea, to dazzle the world in 1870 and conquer France by the work of their general staff and its able chief, von Moltke. Not until after the costly lessons of the little war with Spain in 1898 did our Congress wake up and give the United States Army a general staff and a chief of staff. The new law includes several desirable features of elasticity. Among these is a provision for the selection by each administration of its own chief of staff. A permanent chief of staff might be an obstructionist or might become too perfunctory in compliance. The law wisely