At the examinations I also asked the bandmasters certain questions regarding their position in their respective regiments, the attitude of their colonel toward music, their general treatment, and the hours allowed them for musical practice, and here I came on all kinds of conditions. Some of the commanding officers had no sympathy with music or with the bandsmen, and instead of making them practise their six hours a day, they were put to work as kitchen police and on other fatigue duties. I therefore urged that the commanding officers be impressed with the fact that the primary object of the band is not to fight, but to cheer the fighters, and the better their music, the greater its beneficial effects upon the spirit of the soldiers, and that therefore all bandsmen should be compelled to devote at least five or six hours every day to the practice of their instruments and to rehearsals, and that other duties should be made subsidiary to their musical work and should not be of a character to unfit them for a proper performance on their respective instruments. I also discovered that there was a terrible wastage as regards musical instruments and that in several instances, preparatory to going into action, the instruments had been thrown away or simply left behind, nevermore to be recovered, and that therefore it might be wise to appoint a travelling inspector of musical instruments whose duties should be to attend to the speedy replacement of missing parts, the repairing of instruments, and the supplying of new music. A really excellent headquarters band was formed at Chaumont, which became a source of much gratification to the commander-in-chief and his staff, accompanying him on many of his ceremonial visits and functions. One of my most important recommendations for the school was that every week at least one concert should be given by the professors and such of the bandsmen as were really competent musicians. The programmes should be made up only of the great master composers, in order that the students—many of whom had come from isolated communities in our country and had had but little opportunity to hear good music—should become sensitive to the finer and more spiritual qualities of music as an art. This was carried out in most remarkable fashion during the entire existence of the school, and the programmes and their performance were worthy of a place in any highly cultivated musical community.