One great difficulty in our volunteer force pertains to the institution of a proper subordination. Coming from the same vicinage, often related by the various interests of life, equals at home, officers and men have found it disagreeable to assume the proper relations of their military life. The difficulty has produced two extremes of conduct on the part of officers--either too much laxity and familiarity, or the entire opposite--too great severity. The one breeds contempt among the men, and the other hatred. After the soldier begins to understand the necessities of military life, he sees that his officers should be men of dignity and reliability. He does not respect them unless they preserve a line of conduct corresponding to their superior military position. On the other hand, if he sees that they are inflated by their temporary command, and employ the opportunity to make their authority needlessly felt, and to exercise petty tyranny, he entertains feelings of revenge toward them. A model officer for the volunteer service is one who, quietly assuming the authority incident to his position, makes his men feel that he exercises it only for their own good. Such an officer enters thoroughly into all the details of his command--sees that his men are properly fed, clothed, and sheltered--that they understand their drill, and understand also that its object is to render them more effective and at the same time more secure in the hour of conflict--is careful and pains-taking, and at the same time, in the hour of danger, shares with his men all their exposures. Such an officer will always have a good command. We think there has been a tendency to error in one point of the discipline of the volunteer forces, by transferring to them the system which applied well enough to the regulars. In the latter, by long discipline, each man knows his duty, and if he commits a fault, it is his own act. In the volunteers, the faults of the men are in the majority of cases attributable to the officers. We know some companies in which no man has ever been sent to the guard house, none ever straggled in marching, none ever been missing when ordered into battle. The officers of these companies are such as we have described above. We know other companies--too many--in which the men are constantly straying around the country, constantly found drunk or disorderly, constantly out of the ranks, and constantly absent when they ought to be in line. Invariably the officers of such companies are worthless. If, then, the system of holding officers responsible for the faults of the men, were adopted, a great reform would, in our judgment, be introduced into the service. It is a well-known fact in the army that the character of a regiment, of a brigade, of a division even, can be entirely changed by a change of commanders. A hundred or a thousand men, selected at random from civil life anywhere, will have the same average character; and if the military