Abstract

Bayonets and School-Houses

U.S. Senator Henry Wilson's bill for the peace establishment of the U.S. army increases the present number of troops in the regular service from twenty to upwards of seventy thousand men. There are, incontestably, very grave objections to the proposed increase, but so there are to statesman and Secretary of War Edwin Stanton's. No soberminded citizen, however, differ as he may from Senator and Secretary, will conclude that this would meet the requirements of the country in its present emergency. While not engaging to defend Wilson's proposition as the least that could be made in the face of national contingencies, there is no trouble by the thought of the money it will cost to carry it out, and the dangers and corruption inseparable from the establishment at which it aims.