EXTERNAL RELATIONS. ' 135 



to alter their state, name or condition. This expenditure is the 

 exclusive prerogative of the Commanding Officer. 



Hence all that the Storekeeper can do is to obey the order of 

 the Commanding Officer, expressed or implied, and turn over to 

 him or his agents for use in the current service of the arsenal such 

 stores as may be required. These the Commanding Officer may 

 keep unchanged, or may alter by fabrication ("expend"), at his 

 pleasure. It is his right -and his duty, provided that he tells 

 what has become of the material expended by showing into what 

 fabrication has entered. 



Now, since the whole is greater than any of its parts, the Com- 

 manding Officer may, besides expending material (altering its 

 name), do whatever else is permitted to the Ordnance Store- 

 keeper. Hence he may receive all materials purchased for cur- 

 rent service directly on his own return, without requiring the 

 Storekeeper to go through the motions of receiving and issuing 

 property which neither he nor any of his agents may have ever 

 seen. 



So, if materials on his return are required at other posts, he 

 need not go through the performance of first invoicing them to 

 the Storekeeper, taking his receipts, ordering the Storekeeper to 

 issue them, and having him make new invoices and take new 

 receipts from the real consignee. He will simply do it all him- 

 self, once. 



Should he fabricate a machine which he wishes to keep in the 

 shop, he is not obliged to turn it over to the Storekeeper, and 

 then, like the King of France, march down the hill again with 

 the machine. He simply charges himself with the machine as 

 having been received by fabrication. 



His expenditures for fabrication are managed in the same way ; 

 and so with every transaction with material. 



The volume of the Current Service Return will be somewhat 

 augmented by this change, but that of the Store Return will be 

 almost as much diminished, so that the amount of writing on the 

 two returns will not be greatly increased from this cause. But 

 the result will be, that each tub will stand on its own bottom, 

 and that each return will explain itself so fully that, although it 



