780 
ARMY VETERINARY LEGISLATION. 
He cannot get bis men paid without going to a separate pay 
department, nor get guns or ammunition without applying to a 
separate ordnance department. His life is a life of requisitions 
and red tape. Other armies put these departments in each divi¬ 
sion under the general commanding the division, and in each 
post, while the staff have assimilated rank and good pay, they 
are under the commander of the post, under any captain of an 
independent command, who keeps, and is bound to keep, all 
branches of the service under his control so far as his command 
extends. 
The Chairman. The time of the gentleman from New Jer¬ 
sey has expired. 
Mr. Sulzer. I ask that the gentleman’s time be extended 
five minutes more. 
The Chairman. The gentleman from New York asks that 
the time of the gentleman from New Jersey may be extended 
five minutes. Is there objection? 
There was no objection. 
Mr. Parker of New Jersey. In every other army, especially 
in the German army, the staff in all its branches is made the 
servant, or at any rate the friend, of the line. Our great Secre¬ 
tary of War, the greatest, I believe, that we have had since 
Stanton, says that the need of our Army is to bring the line and 
staff together. He therefore proposed and urged upon us that 
details should go from the line to the staff, and from the staff 
back to the line, as proposed in the Senate bill ; that there 
should be only details and no permanent appointments, so that 
the whole Army should be one, working harmoniously together 
through the system of details without subjection of the line to 
permanent and separate staffs. 
The committee and perhaps a majority of this House con¬ 
cluded that we should go slowly. That may be wise. We 
therefore provide by the House bill that there shall be details, 
but only in the lower grades of the staff, and we add to the 
Secretary’s plan that these details shall be settled by competi¬ 
tion before boards of officers, so as to avoid favoritism and to de¬ 
termine fairly what men shall go into the lower ranks of the 
staff. The bill thus provides for a perpetual change and flow 
between the line and the lower ranks of the staff of the Army. 
For the higher ranks of the staff the bill provides that from 
those who have been detailed there shall be competitive exami¬ 
nation for appointment to these higher ranks, so that we shall 
get the cream of our young men in the great staff departments 
