This radical revision of the army’s disciplinary methods is proposed in a recodification of the articles of war, dropping thirteen sections from the old code as obsolete and inserting provisions for a policy of suspended sentence and less drastic treatment of military offenders generally. The bill makes no mention of the military prison on Alcatraz Island, San Francisco. In this connection the committee report says the Secretary of War is convinced that establishment of the detention barracks and necessary branches would make the maintenance of a military prison unnecessary. The elimination of Alcatraz Island from the bill would make possible the use of the islands as an immigration station, as desired by the immigration bureau. The jurisdiction of courts-martial would be broadened considerably under the proposed new code, extending to capital offenses in time of peace which are beyond the reach of civil courts. The present code gives this provision only in time of war. On spies in time of war only would the death sentence be mandatory under the new code, and a two-thirds majority of the court-martial imposing such sentence would be required instead of a bare majority. _Frank Sanborn on the State Control of County Jails._--In a letter to the Boston Transcript, Mr. Sanborn writes as follows: “The present agitation of the prison reform question in Massachusetts, and the number of those who support a better system of prison discipline, are interesting facts to me, who, as secretary of the first Board of State Charities, appointed fifty years ago last October, was the first permanent inspector of all our Massachusetts prisons that had ever filled that post. I devoted much time to it in the first years of my service of five years; and on the 2nd of March, 1865, my friend, Gov. Andrew, sent in to the Senate my long special report on our prisons, with suggestions for their reformation, most of which were subsequently inserted as laws in our successive revisions of the statutes. But one suggestion, then first made, has not yet been adopted and is urgently needed for adoption by the present legislature--the control and classification of the prisons in our fourteen counties by the State government. It is not practicable, without a change in the State constitution, to make this control quite complete, for our county sheriffs are constitutional officers and have certain legal and customary rights over the arrests and custody of untried prisoners, witnesses, etc., which no statute can take away. But all convicts in the counties--that is, all sentenced persons--should be under a uniform discipline in their prisons, which the State alone can establish and enforce.