Mr. SCHENCK. Myimpression is that the sense of this House is against the section as it stands in the bill, and I certainly do not mean to struggle to keep it there. But it is equally certain that it is somewhat due to the ComMilAffrs that this House should clearly understand why it was that the committee believed that in an army bill a feature of this kind should compose one of its parts. I will not go into any question about the character of the present incumbent of the provost Marshal Generals Office. He is able to defend that for himself. It is defended by the history of the war. It is defended by his se r vices through good report and evi report. According to the best O his ability, that officer has so discharged his duty that those in his own immediate Dept, who know best how that duty has ecu discharged, have no such e ithets to bestow upon him as that he is an uneserving officer. It is not for me, therefore, to inquire why gentlemen make personal issues with that officer here, in a debate upon a feature in a Military bill which has no reference to persons, but merely to a plan, a scheme of operations and I here desire to say to the House, in behalf of the Military Committee, that in all their labor of consideration, disculssion, inquiry, and other work tendin to the framing ot a properbill for the estalfiishment of an army system, they have endeavored to act without reference to persons, having in view only the best schemes or the attainment of objects which might result in the public good. There is nothing about GenlFry in this section. The proability is, that if the section should prevail as a part of the bill, GenlFry would be retained in his present position; but it would not necessarily do so. The question truly before this House, as a legislative body, is whether or not the committee were right in supposing that a Provost Marshal Generals Office, as a feature of a military system, is needed. Now, upon that subject, gentlemen have not been qpite fair in referrin to the testimony upon which the opinion of the committee, in favor of such necessity was based. The Gentfrom NewYork, tMr. CONKLING] in commenting upon the letter of the Lieutenant General, sent in response to a call made upon him by the SecyWar, and officially communicated to this House, and by this House referred to the military Committee, has taken occasion to say that ere is nothing in that letter about recruiting, that it relates to desertion.