This, by the way, is only one instance of the greatest defect in our volunteer system: the broad and almost impassable gulf of demarcation between commissioned officers and enlisted men. The character of the army requires that this should be eradicated as soon as possible. Enthusiastic patriotism might make men willing to bear with it for a time, or while the war seemed a temporary affair. But since the conviction has settled down upon the popular mind that we are in for a long and tedious struggle, and that a great army of American citizens must be kept on foot during the whole of it, overshadowing all peaceful pursuits, and remoulding the whole character of our people, there begins to be felt also the need of organizing that army as far as possible in conformity with the genius of our people and Government. The greenest recruit expects to find in the army a sharp distinction of rank, and a strict obedience to authority, to which he has been a stranger in peaceful times. But he is disappointed and discouraged when he finds a needless barrier erected to divide men into two classes, of which the smallest retains to itself all the profits and privileges of the service. He comprehends very well that a captain needs higher pay and more liberty than a private, and a general than a captain; but he fails to see the reason why a second lieutenant should have four or five times the pay of an orderly sergeant, and be officially recognized all through the army regulations as a gentleman, while he who holds the much more arduous and responsible office is simply an 'enlisted man,' It will be much easier for him to discover why this is so than to find any good reason why it should remain so. We are managing an army of half a million by the routine intended for one of ten thousand, and we are organizing citizen volunteers under regulations first created for the most dissimilar army to be found in the civilized world. We adopted our army system from England, where there are widely and perpetually distinct classes of society in peace as well as war; the nobility and gentry furnishing all the officers, while the ranks are filled up with the vast crowd, poor and ignorant enough to fight for sixpence a day. To our little standing army of bygone days the system was well enough adapted, for in that we too had really two distinct classes of men. West Point furnished even more officers than we needed, with thorough education, and the refined and expensive habits that education brings with it. The ranks were filled with foreigners and broken-down men, who had neither the ambition nor the ability to rise to anything higher. But we have changed all that. The healthiest and best blood of our country is flowing in that country's cause. Our army is composed of more than half a million citizens, young, eager, ambitious, and trained from infancy each to believe himself the equal of any man on earth. With the