STAFF 



5520 



STAG BEETLE 



The chief, of staff is head of all departments of 

 the army and responsible only to the Presi- 

 dent, who is the constitutional head of the 

 army as a whole. Responsible to the chief of 

 staff are the military secretary, quartermaster- 

 general, inspector-general, the chief of engi- 

 neers, chief of ordnance,- judge-advocate-gen- 

 eral, chief signal officer and the chief of the 

 bureau of insular affairs. Thus the head of 

 every department of the service is responsible 

 to the chief of staff, and through him, direct 

 to the President. 



The general of the United States army has a 

 personal staff consisting of six officers called 

 aids, ranking as colonels. A lieutenant-general 

 has two aids and a military secretary, ranking 

 as lieutenant colonels; a major-general has 

 three aids, each with the rank of captain or 

 lieutenant. 



European Staffs. The general staff of the 

 German army, the most efficient organization 

 in any modern army prior to 1915, performs the 

 duties of collecting, adding to and arranging 

 information on military matters and the train- 

 ing of the officers for duty. Divided into sec- 

 tions, the staff concerns itself with plans of 

 operations in case of war with any nation in 

 the world. Campaigns are drawn up; details 

 of the most minute kind are collected concern- 

 ing the roads, rivers, towns, bridges, villages, 

 railway facilities in fact, nothing concerning 

 the country under consideration is regarded as 

 too trivial for attention. There are six sec- 

 tions of the German general staff, all working 

 under a director. Their information on all 

 countries is complete, tabular, indexed for 

 ready reference, each section taking charge of 

 information concerning certain countries. What 

 is called the "third section of the general staff" 

 is devoted to collecting information concerning 

 England, France, Italy, Switzerland, Spain, Por- 

 tugal and the United States, and it is claimed 

 that the maps of these countries obtained by 

 the staff are more correct and detailed than any 

 to be obtained in those countries themselves. 



All generals of the German army must have 

 served on the general staff, and a constant ex- 

 change of officers from the line to the staff and 

 staff to line is the rule. The German general 

 staff organization is now copied by most Euro- 

 pean countries and by Japan, which country, 

 after careful consideration, decided that Britain 

 and the United States were to be its models on 

 naval matters, but Germany its guide in mili- 

 tary organization. See ARMY. F.ST.A. 



Consult Wilkinson's The Brain of an Army. 



STAFF, an inexpensive compound resem- 

 bling plaster and used instead of stone for 

 temporary buildings, architectural decoration 

 and statuary. It consists chiefly of plaster of 

 Paris and hydraulic cement, mixed in water 

 with dextrin and glycerine. Staff was first 

 used as a covering for buildings in the Paris 

 Exposition in 1878, and it was extensively em- 

 ployed on the buildings of the World's Colum- 

 bian Exposition at Chicago in 1893, of the 

 Louisiana Purchase Exposition at Saint Louis 

 in 1904, and of the Panama-Pacific expositions 

 at San Francisco and San Diego in 1915. 



STAG, the male of the red deer, the com- 

 mon deer of Europe. A full-grown stag is a 

 handsome animal, standing about four feet high 

 at the shoulder, and with branching horns three 

 feet in length. Hunters find the pursuit of this 

 noble animal a very thrilling sport, as it is 

 fleet of foot, a skilful swimmer and possessed 

 of keen sight and hearing. The opening canto 

 of Scott's Lady of the Lake, which contains a 

 spirited account of a stag hunt, describes a 

 characteristic of the animal in these lines: 



As Chief, who hears his warder call, 

 "To arms ! the foemen storm the wall," 

 The antlered monarch of the waste 

 Sprang from his heathery couch in haste. 

 But, ere his fleet career he took, 

 The dewdrops from his flanks he shook, 

 Like crested leader proud and high, 

 Tossed his beamed frontlet to the sky. 



The North American wapiti or elk (which 

 see) is closely related to the stag. See, also, 

 DEER. 



STAG BEETLE, be't'l, a family of insects 

 in which the males of certain species have 

 curious hornlike processes on the mandibles. 

 In some cases these horns are nearly as long as 



f C, 



THE STAG BEETLE 

 (a) Female; (b) male; (c) grubs. 



the body of the beetle. The resemblance of 

 these projections to the horns of a stag has 

 given rise to the name of the family. Common 

 American species include the giant stag beetle 

 of the Southern states, with mandibles an inch 



