master's Department to the extent allowed by the appropriations made by Congress for this purpose.

The policy followed has been rather to increase the size of the posts in which the Army is to be quartered than to increase the number. Two considerations have determined that policy: First, economy of administration, and second, and most important, efficiency of officers and men. The tendency of life in small one or two company posts is narrowing and dwarfing, and such posts can be justified only by necessity. On the other hand, the comparison and emulation between officers and organizations grouped in a large post, the advantages of systematic study and practice in the schools which can be maintained at such posts, the advantage of being under the immediate direction and influence of officers of high rank who can not be scattered among the small posts, but can be collected in the large ones; the practical benefit derived from handling considerable bodies of troops so that company officers may be learning to handle regiments, and regimental officers to handle brigades, and so on-all these considerations, point to the large post as furnishing the conditions of increasing efficiency on the part of both officers and men.

The only argument which has been made against this view is that the scattering of the Army in a great number of small posts would popularize it, and that there ought to be an equitable distribution of the troops among all the different States. I think these propositions may be dismissed with the confident assertion that the Army will be popular and satisfactory to all the States in proportion as it is efficient and economical.

Another line of policy followed by the Department is, so far as practicable, to get the Army posts out of the cities and large towns, and establish them upon larger tracts of cheaper land in the neighborhood of the same cities and towns, so that the men may have the benefit of country air instead of city air, and more room for training and exercise; the neighborhood of the barracks may be under military control; the rum shops and brothels may be pushed farther away from the men; and at the same time the advantages of convenient inspection, transportation and supply, and a reasonable degree of educational and and social privileges, may be retained.

In order to secure a definite plan for the distribution of troops and the construction work necessary to provide for their maintenance, a

board was convened in Washington in November last, composed of all the general officers of the Army in the United States, under the fol lowing directions:

By direction of the Secretary of War, a board of officers is hereby appointed to meet in Washington, D. C., on the 25th day of November, 1901, to consider and report upon the location and distribution of the military posts required for the proper accommodation, instruction, and training of the Army as organized under the act of February 2, 1901, not including coast fortifications. The board will make recommendations in detail as to which of the existing posts should be retained or abandoned, and of those retained which, if any, should be enlarged and to what extent, and the location, size, and character of such new posts as may be necessary, having due regard in all its recommendations to the proper distribution of the different arms of the service based upon strategic, sanitary, and economical considerations.

The board will also formulate and submit a project for the location, examinations and surveys to be made for the permanent camp grounds provided for by section 35 of the act of February 2, 1901.

This board performed its duties during the months of November, December, January, and February, and its report and recommendations were transmitted to Congress on the 19th of May, and are printed as House Doc. No. 618, Fifty-seventh Congress, first session.

Much delay and difficulty in providing barracks and quarters for the coast-defense artillery has arisen from the policy followed in making appropriations during the earlier years of work upon our coast defenses. With what we can now see to have been unwise economy, the appropriations were in a great number of cases so limited as to permit the purchase of only enough land for the fortifications themselves, leaving the land necessary for barracks, quarters, hospitals, storehouses, and administrative purposes to be acquired in the future. As a natural result, as soon as the Government was committed to an extensive fortification the prices of all the additional land which it needed in the neighborhood were put up immensely, and in order to provide for troops to man the fortifications, the Government has been obliged, after long negotiations, to pay many times as much as the land could have been bought for originally, or to take condemnation proceedings with usually the same result.

To prevent a continuance of this practice an order was made on April 9, 1901, requiring all papers presented to the Secretary of War for approval of the purchase of land connected with the seacoast for

tifications, to be accompanied by a certificate of the Chief of Artillery, that the proposal presented included all the land which would be required for all purposes of the defense at that point. It is to be hoped that future appropriations for such purposes will be so arranged as to permit a continuance of this policy.

SEACOAST DEFENSES.

Additional guns have been mounted in the coast-defense fortifications during the year as follows: Eight 12-inch, three 8-inch, twenty rapid-fire, thirty-four 12-inch mortars, making a total now mounted of eighty 12-inch, one hundred and twelve 10-inch, eighty-nine 8-inch, one hundred and eight rapid-fire guns, and two hundred and ninetyseven mortars.

There have also been completed and issued, ready to mount, additional guns, as follows: Two 12-inch, three 10-inch, seventy-four rapid-fire, and fifteen mortars, making a total now mounted or ready to mount of eighty-two 12-inch, one hundred and fifteen 10-inch, eighty-nine 8-inch, one hundred and eighty-two rapid-fire, and three hundred and twelve mortars.

The status of emplacements for which funds have been provided by Congress was as follows at the close of the fiscal year 1902:

a Nineteen of these, which had been mounted temporarily, have since been dismounted. bOne temporarily.

Including seventy 6-pounders not requiring permanent emplacements.

In compliance with the direction of the fortifications act of June 6, 1902, a board was constituted in July last, composed of one engineer officer, one ordnance officer, three artillery officers, one naval officer, and one civilian mechanical engineer of high standing, to make a thorough test of disappearing gun carriages. Such tests were made by the board in accordance with the statute. The report of the board was unanimous in favor of the disappearing carriage, and the Board of Ordnance and Fortification has concurred in that approval.

This is the third competent board which has tested and approved the disappearing carriage, and the third time that the Board of Ordnance and Fortification, with widely differing membership on each occasion, has approved it as a type.

When the general plan of coast-defense fortification was adopted by the Endicott board in 1886, the only means then invented for protecting the high-power coast-defense gun and its crew was the steel or chilled cast-iron turret, which would have cost between $1,000,000 and $1,100,000 for each pair of 12-inch guns mounted. The first attempt to escape from this enormous expense by a mechanical device which would protect the gun and gunners during the period of loading and expose the gun only at the time of firing was the gun lift, upon which we now have two 12-inch guns mounted at Sandy Hook. It cost about $525,000, exclusive of the guns, and each of the guns. mounted upon it can be fired once in eight minutes and a half. Within a few rods of this gun lift at Sandy Hook we have two 12-inch guns mounted on modern disappearing carriages, at a cost of $150,000 for the carriages, emplacements and protection of both guns, and each of these guns can be fired ten times in eight minutes and a half.

Satisfactory progress has been made in the installation of searchlights, in developing systems of fire control and direction, and in the application of electricity to the handling of heavy guns and projectiles and ammunition.

The nitrocellulose smokeless powder developed by the Ordnance Department continues to prove satisfactory. Four private firms are engaged in its manufacture, and a considerable reserve has been accumulated.

The test of the Gathmann torpedo gun under the requirement of the fortifications act of March 1, 1901, resulted in an unfavorable report, in which the Board of Ordnance and Fortification has concurred. The statute required the Gathmann gun to be fired in competition with an army 12-inch service rifle, and the firing of the latter weapon exhibited extraordinary progress made by the Ordnance Department toward the perfection of high explosives for the bursting charge of armor-piercing shells, and in the development of fuses for such shells. The ordnance shells from the 12-inch service rifle passed entirely through a 12-inch harveyized steel plate and exploded

on the farther side of the plate. The ability thus demonstrated to send a shell through a ship's armor 12 inches in thickness and detonate the shell within the ship is of course of great defensive value.

It has been the fashion of late to decry mortars as weapons of coast defense, and Congress has recently refrained from appropriations for their further construction. Extensive and thorough tests of mortar firing made last spring at Fort Preble, Portland Harbor, have, however, demonstrated the great accuracy of mortars, and have also shown that their accuracy can be relied upon through a much wider range, both far and near, than was formerly supposed. I think confidence in them should be resumed, and appropriations for their construction and emplacement continued in accordance with the original plan of defense.

Most valuable experience and suggestion and great practical benefit have been received by all branches of the service concerned in coast defense, from a series of joint maneuvers participated in by the Army and the Navy on the New England coast during September. This movement was undertaken on the suggestion of the Chief of Artillery, and took the form of simulated attacks by the Navy upon the defenses at the eastern end of Long Island Sound, at New London, at the entrance of Narragansett Bay, and at New Bedford. They were carried out with the most admirable spirit and efficiency by both branches of the service. The Army was much gratified by the effective participation with them of the First Massachusetts Heavy Artillery and two companies of Connecticut Heavy Artillery; and with the Navy the naval reserves of New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts took part. The Thirteenth New York Heavy Artillery was most desirous to take part, but was prevented by a lack of State appropriations. An actual attempt to use tools is the best way to learn whether they are in good order and are complete, and it is also the best way to learn how to use them. The advantage gained in this way by the Engineer, Ordnance, Signal, and Artillery Corps of the Army, and I doubt not also by the officers of the Navy, more than justifies the undertaking and indicates the wisdom of annual repetitions of the exercise at different points upon the coast.

I append hereto a memorandum by the Chief of Artillery, marked "Appendix D," and a memorandum by General MacArthur, marked