day be day, without delay, and without sensibly diluting its discipline. Whereas, raised by regiments, as at present, with officers and men equally raw, they must be kept in camps of instruction till the pressing want of their services has gone by, or the opportunity of their usefulness is lost.

If it be said that the stimulus to recruiting will be taken away if the aspirations of new officers are repressed, we do not hesitate to meet that alternative by saying that it would meet the wants of the country and the views of an enlightened public sentiment better to draft the whole 300,000 men with the distinct understanding that they were to fill out the skeleton regiments to which the army of veterans has become reduced than to have them raised without drafting by a volunteer process to which raw officers and unskilled medical men would communicate their own ignorance and inadequacy.

Although it is purely on sanitary grounds that we urge this plea, it would be easy to show that military and political wisdom are in exact harmony with sanitary requirements in favoring such a plan. But we do not venture beyond our own sphere to urge considerations of which others are so much better judges.

If Government will call on the Medical Department of the Army for its official judgment on this grave and urgent question, we feel no doubt that these views will be abundantly confirmed, and more forcibly argued.

We have the honor to be, with great respect, your obedient servants,

HENRY W. BELLOWS,

W. H. VAN BUREN, M. D.,

C. R. AGNEW, M. D.,

WOLCOTT GIBBS, M. D.,

FREDK. LAW OLMSTEAD,

GEO. T. STRONG,

Executive Committee of the U. S. Sanitary Commission.

The following is an extract from a report to the Sanitary Commission by its actuary, Mr. E. B. Elliott, which is now in press:

Since one hundred and four (104.4) out of every thousand d privates together) in the entire Army is the constant proportion of sick, it follows, that, to secure in the field a constant force of 500,000 effective (or healthy and able) men, the nation must constantly maintain, in hospitals or elsewhere, an additional force of 58,000 sick men, making the entire force maintained, boat sick and effective, to consist of 558,000 men; 4 per cent., or 22,000 of this entire force would be commissioned officers, and 96 per cent., or 536,000 enlisted men. And since to supply continuous losses in the ranks of the enlisted men, other then losses from expiration of service, requires recruits at the annual rate of 229 per 1,000 enlisted men, if follows, that to keep the ranks of these 536,000 enlisted men constantly full, will require annually 123,000 recruits; 29,000 of these recruits being demanded to supply the annual loss occasioned by death; 54,000 the loss arising from discharge from service, mainly from disability; 27,000 for excess of desertions over returns of deserters to duty;" 7,000 missing in action, not subsequently otherwise accounted for, and 6,000 the loss from other causes.

To repeat-assuming the returns of the period from the 1st of June, 1861, to the 1st of March, 1862, as the basis of calculation, it follows, that to secure in the field a constant force of 500,000 effective men, the nation must not only maintain 58,000 sick men, but it must also recruit the ranks of the enlisted portion of these forces with new material, at the rate of 123,000 per annum, so long as the war shall last; a rate somewhat exceeding 10,000 recruits per month. Of these 123,000 annual recruits, 83,000 are to supply losses by death and discharged from service (exclusive of discharges for expiration of its