The United States has just been presented with another illustration of the fact that its militia system is all at sixes and sevens. On Wednesday the Twelfth New York Regiment was ordered to pass in review before Senator Wadsforth of New York, and an officer in the Carranza Army. For some reason the appearance of the regiment was unsatisfactory, so that Major-General O'Ryan ordered it to march past the reviewing stand a second time. An order of this kind is not altogether unusual, and not particularly noteworthy.

But what was the result of Major-General O'Ryan's order? A large group of officers of the Twelfth tendered their resignations, because they felt that they had been insulted. This act was startling and spectacular in the extreme; for its immediate cause was insignificant. It revealed the presence of strong feeling and overwrought nerves--a sort of bursting charge that needed only a slight detonation to set it off. The situation is very much as though two men should come to harsh blows because one had accidentally broken the point of the other's pencil. In both cases a mere trifle would have resulted in important developments; the immediate cause could not possibly justify or explain the resultant action.

The root of the trouble lies in the fact that our militia system is tangled and muddled and shilly-shallying from beginning to end. The officers are to a great extent inadequate, and possessed of the characteristic touchiness that usually accompanies inadequacy. For several months they have been in the presence of a situation that they had not been trained to meet, and were consequently incapable of meeting. The problem has been too much for them. The result has been demoralization; their nerves have been overwrought and their perspective ruined.

This state of affairs offers the true explanation of the action of the officers of the Twelfth, which the New York Times rightly characterizes as the "Revolt of the Militia." The wholesale tendering of resignations is simply witness to the helplessness of the militia system. Yale News.