BUDGET

The estimates for the next fiscal year have been assembled by the Secretary of the Treasury and by him transmitted to Congress.  I purpose at a later day to submit to Congress a form of budget prepared for me and recommended by the President’s Commission on Economy and Efficiency, with a view of suggesting the useful and informing character of a properly framed budget.

WAR DEPARTMENT

The War Department combines within its jurisdiction functions which in other countries usually occupy three departments.  It not only has the management of the Army and the coast defenses, but its jurisdiction extends to the government of the Philippines and of Porto Rico and the control of the receivership of the customs revenues of the Dominican Republic; it also includes the recommendation of all plans for the improvement of harbors and waterways and their execution when adopted; and, by virtue of an Executive order, the supervision of the construction of the Panama Canal.

ARMY REORGANIZATION

Our small Army now consists of 83,809 men, excluding the 5,000 Philippine scouts.  Leaving out of consideration the Coast Artillery force, whose position is fixed in our various seacoast defenses, and the present garrisons of our various insular possessions, we have to-day within the continental United States a mobile Army of only about 35,000 men.  This little force must be still further drawn upon to supply the new garrisons for the great naval base which is being established at Pearl Harbor, in the Hawaiian Islands, and to protect the locks now rapidly approaching completion at Panama.  The forces remaining in the United States are now scattered in nearly 50 Posts, situated for a variety of historical reasons in 24 States.  These posts contain only fractions of regiments, averaging less than 700 men each.  In time of peace it has been our historical policy to administer these units separately by a geographical organization.  In other words, our Army in time of peace has never been a united organization but merely scattered groups of companies, battalions, and regiments, and the first task in time of war has been to create out of these scattered units an Army fit for effective teamwork and cooperation.

To the task of meeting these patent defects, the War Department has been addressing itself during the past year.  For many years we had no officer or division whose business it was to study these problems and plan remedies for these defects.  With the establishment of the General Staff nine years ago a body was created for this purpose.  It has, necessarily, required time to overcome, even in its own personnel, the habits of mind engendered by a century of lack of method, but of late years its work has become systematic and effective, and it has recently been addressing itself vigorously to these problems.