Any other authorities of the Government would interpret the word "crimes," as here used, to cover only acts known as felonies or threats of violence, where the danger to law and order was too great to allow the accused to run at large, yet for over a hundred years Army officers, under the unwritten laws handed down from the Middle Ages, have interpreted this word to embrace every trifling offense for which a soldier is triable by court martial, even neglects and omissions, such as "Failure to attend roll-call" and "Neglect to clean arms"; that the article was mandatory--that no soldier could be tried by court martial until first confined in the guard-house, and grave and serious courts have refused to enter upon the trial of such enlisted men unless previously confined. The disgrace of the accused and the presumption of guilt were at once established by the commencement of punishment, and in hundreds of cases prisoners were held for weeks on trivial charges awaiting courts for their trial, when the scarcity of officers and the remoteness of their stations rendered it impracticable to promptly convene them. The Adjutant General of the Army, in his report to the General commanding for the year 1891, reports "From January, 1867, to June 30, 1891 (24½ years), the number of desertions from the Army was 88,475," over one-third the number that enlisted during that period; he estimates the loss to the Government by their desertion and the necessary enlistments to replace them at $23,003,500, and further states that during that period 16,000 deserters were apprehended or surrendered, and estimates the expense for rewards of apprehension, transportation, and trials by court martial of these 16,000 at $2,500,000, making an aggregate pecuniary loss to the Government by desertion for this period of $25,503,500, or an annual loss from deserters alone of over $1,000,000. If the pay of the enlisted men be increased and uniformly graded down from the commissioned officers as proposed in the project for a permanent military establishment, it would increase the cost of the Army but a little over four million dollars per annum; thereafter it is fair to presume desertion would be almost as infrequent in the Army as it now is in the police of the large cities or the letter-carriers of the Federal Government. If so, this saving of one million per annum would repay one-fourth of this additional expense, but the betterment only begins here. A large percentage of the force of each garrison is constantly in the guard-house for other offenses than desertion. This, and their frequent trials by court martial (in some years aggregating almost the total number of enlisted men), it is fair to presume, would almost totally disappear, and there would be another great saving in the expense, and an equally valuable gain in the efficiency of the Army.