The above inspection by an officer of the Inspector General’s Department should not, however, be the only one. At the close of each period of training there should be an examination of the organizations on the work they are supposed to have done. The last of March or first of April the field officers of the regiment, as a board, should examine the companies on the results of their winter’s work; a similar examination should be made at the close of the period of company field training. When the battalions have finished their period of field training the colonel and lieutenant colonel should form the board to examine them. If the brigade commander be thoroughly posted on all matters pertaining to infantry training his presence at the examinations and careful supervision of the work cannot fail to be very beneficial. His supervision should not, however, lead to restriction of the proper latitude which should be allowed subordinates; his mission should be to see that the instruction given is correct and that the whole course has been satisfactorily covered. [Sidenote: National guard inspection] The same general principles apply to the inspection of national guard organizations. If anything is found wrong with them the inspector should not keep silent at the time and content himself with rendering later an adverse written report; he should tell the officer being inspected what is wrong and take pains to show him how to correct the error. A helping hand, offered in the right spirit, will always be appreciated. X TRAINING A NEW REGIMENT [Sidenote: Need for quick training] In this country we are liable to have the necessity forced upon us of turning out troops in the shortest possible time. We shall have to use troops not fully trained; we shall have to employ them as soon as they can be used at all. Of course this system will be frightfully costly in blood and money. In war imperfectly trained troops must pay with their lives for all mistakes. The better trained they are, the fewer mistakes, the more skill they possess the more cheaply can any desired result be obtained. It is the duty of all officers who may be charged with the responsibility of preparing this mass of untrained men for war service to give the subject careful thought, to study the question carefully and to be prepared on short notice to take charge of such work and produce the best results possible in the shortest time. Success in this hurried training can only be secured if the man in charge thoroughly appreciates his task and follows out a well prepared and systematic course. There are three phases of the problem: Our regular regiments must be raised from a strength of about 65 men per company to nearly 150. The national guard regiments, less well prepared, will have, as a rule, to stand a still greater increase of new men, and there will be hundreds of entirely new regiments to be raised. [Sidenote: The commander]