A Senate Report Exposes the National Guard's 'Go-As-You-Please' Spending

The report of the Senate committee on the military deficiency is a full justification of all that the Ledger has said concerning the administration, and the need of a thorough reform of this department. The Ledger has never attempted to locate the responsibility as definitely as the Senate committee has done, because it believed the trouble lay further back, in the acts of the legislature, and that the real need was a revision of those acts which would give the civil power the control which under the Constitution it is required to exercise over the military.

Beginning with territorial days, the military organization has been conducting itself with but little direction or restraint from the civil power. It has framed the acts passed by the legislature and had conceded to it about all it demanded, except in the constitutional convention where it endeavored to ground itself in the fundamental law as an independent department of the state government. Under these conditions it could hardly be expected to go otherwise than as it pleased. So long as everything went on the flowing tide of prosperity the results of such an administration were little noticed. Now it is seen to be necessary to check extravagance and not be diverted by what 'the boys' did at the time of the Seattle fire or the trouble in the Franklin mines, from a consideration of the cost of this 'go-as-you-please' arrangement.

One of the plainest requirements is that the law should be changed to make the administrative officers of the guard appointive by the governor. It has cost the state, in round numbers, $1,000 for each election of Adjutant Gen. O'Brien, when such officers could have been appointed at no expense. And they should hold office only at the approval of the governor.