EXTERNAL RELATIONS. 51 



cash papers. It is axiomatic that material should not be paid for 

 until received ; but the converse of the proposition does not hold, 

 for all material must be received before it is paid for. How long 

 it is received in fact, before it is" received " on the cash vouchers, 

 depends upon a great many contingencies. At this arsenal, owing 

 to the necessity of sending certificates of inspection to Wash- 

 ington for approval, at least two weeks must elapse. On con- 

 tracts on which no payment is made until completion, many 

 months may pass. 



Delays due to the time consumed in transmitting funds and in 

 making out the necessary papers also intervene, so as to separate 

 still further the actual from the constructive receipt. This often 

 requires a separate abstract to be made of materials received, 

 but not paid for. 



This involves not only a radical departure from the established 

 rule already described, but of necessity the searching of an 

 entirely different set of records, for the cash vouchers not fur- 

 nishing the information required, it must be sought in the books 

 showing the receipts into store. Now, since these have all to be 

 gone over for this extraordinary purpose, the question arises, 

 whether it would not be better to keep the accounts in the first 

 instance, so that the quantities " received " should be based upon 

 receipts solely, and not partly on purchases and partly on 

 receipts. 



4. Since stores may not be taken up until paid for, but are 

 often needed for use or issue as soon as they are received, it may 

 easily happen tha v . material procured at the end of one year may 

 be issued, say to aaother post, on the return of that year, but not 

 be acknowledged as a purchase for a year after. When this 

 happens with a new material, or when more of a given material 

 has been issued than was reported on hand, the result is anomalous, 

 if not confusing. Bu<: this is not all ; it leads to delaying the issues 

 to prevent such a result, or to keeping back in an irregular way 

 the papers explaining them 



5. As another illustration of the impolicy of making a receipt 

 necessarily depend upon a purchase, let us take the case of troops 



