The proportion of our cavalry regiments has wisely been increased.  The American cavalryman, trained to manoeuvre and fight with equal facility on foot and on horseback, is the best type of soldier for general purposes now to be found in the world.  The ideal cavalryman of the present day is a man who can fight on foot as effectively as the best infantryman, and who is in addition unsurpassed in the care and management of his horse and in his ability to fight on horseback.

A general staff should be created.  As for the present staff and supply departments, they should be filled by details from the line, the men so detailed returning after a while to their line duties.  It is very undesirable to have the senior grades of the Army composed of men who have come to fill the positions by the mere fact of seniority.  A system should be adopted by which there shall be an elimination grade by grade of those who seem unfit to render the best service in the next grade.  Justice to the veterans of the Civil War who are still in the Army would seem to require that in the matter of retirements they be given by law the same privileges accorded to their comrades in the Navy.

The process of elimination of the least fit should be conducted in a manner that would render it practically impossible to apply political or social pressure on behalf of any candidate, so that each man may be judged purely on his own merits.  Pressure for the promotion of civil officials for political reasons is bad enough, but it is tenfold worse where applied on behalf of officers of the Army or Navy.  Every promotion and every detail under the War Department must be made solely with regard to the good of the service and to the capacity and merit of the man himself.  No pressure, political, social, or personal, of any kind, will be permitted to exercise the least effect in any question of promotion or detail; and if there is reason to believe that such pressure is exercised at the instigation of the officer concerned, it will be held to militate against him.  In our Army we cannot afford to have rewards or duties distributed save on the simple ground that those who by their own merits are entitled to the rewards get them, and that those who are peculiarly fit to do the duties are chosen to perform them.

Every effort should be made to bring the Army to a constantly increasing state of efficiency.  When on actual service no work save that directly in the line of such service should be required.  The paper work in the Army, as in the Navy, should be greatly reduced.  What is needed is proved power of command and capacity to work well in the field.  Constant care is necessary to prevent dry rot in the transportation and commissary departments.