have—­those of the seacoast and of our northern and part of our southern boundary.  I do not think that any question of advantage to localities or to States should determine the location of the new posts.  The reorganization and enlargement of the Bureau of Military Information which the Secretary has effected is a work the usefulness of which will become every year more apparent.  The work of building heavy guns and the construction of coast defenses has been well begun and should be carried on without check.

The report of the Attorney-General is by law submitted directly to Congress, but I can not refrain from saying that he has conducted the increasing work of the Department of Justice with great professional skill.  He has in several directions secured from the courts decisions giving increased protection to the officers of the United States and bringing some classes of crime that escaped local cognizance and punishment into the tribunals of the United States, where they could be tried with impartiality.

The numerous applications for Executive clemency presented in behalf of persons convicted in United States courts and given penitentiary sentences have called my attention to a fact referred to by the Attorney-General in his report, namely, that a time allowance for good behavior for such prisoners is prescribed by the Federal statutes only where the State in which the penitentiary is located has made no such provision.  Prisoners are given the benefit of the provisions of the State law regulating the penitentiary to which they may be sent.  These are various, some perhaps too liberal and some perhaps too illiberal.  The result is that a sentence for five years means one thing if the prisoner is sent to one State for confinement and quite a different thing if he is sent to another.  I recommend that a uniform credit for good behavior be prescribed by Congress.

I have before expressed my concurrence in the recommendation of the Attorney-General that degrees of murder should be recognized in the Federal statutes, as they are, I believe, in all the States.  These grades are founded on correct distinctions in crime.  The recognition of them would enable the courts to exercise some discretion in apportioning punishment and would greatly relieve the Executive of what is coming to be a very heavy burden—­the examination of these cases on application for commutation.

The aggregate of claims pending against the Government in the Court of Claims is enormous.  Claims to the amount of nearly $400,000,000 for the taking of or injury to the property of persons claiming to be loyal during the war are now before that court for examination.  When to these are added the Indian depredation claims and the French spoliation claims, an aggregate is reached that is indeed startling.  In the defense of all these cases the Government is at great disadvantage.  The claimants have preserved their evidence, whereas the agents of the Government