CONTROL DEPARTMENT--SOMethIleS called the CONTROL DEPARTMENT, a presid ing civil department of the army, the creation of which furnished ground for much public controversy throughout 1867, and for much misapprehension since the appoint ment of a controller-in-chief to the war-office in Jan. 1868. The common idea seemed to be, that this officer, who held high rank in the Military hierarchy, was to control the whole war-office, and consequently the minister of war himself. His title was not a very felicitous one; but hisfunctions were merely to control the departments charged with army supplies—that is, the commissariat, store, purveyors, transport, and barrack departments. The appointment was the result of an inquiry in 1866 and 1867 by a com mittee of officers, of whom lord Stmthnairn was chairman. The recommendation was, that the departments specified should not only be concentrated at head-quarters; but that in every command there should be a controller, or deputy or assistant controller, ac cording to the importance of the charge, whose duty it should be to harmonize the same departments within the command. It was the corporation formed by the controller in
chief and these local controllers which constituted the control department (The de partment was formed in 1870. The controller-in-chief was in the same year replaced by the surveyor-general of the ordnance, a parliamentary officer under the war secretary. In 1875, the united control department ceased to exist, and was divided into a commis sariat department and an ordnance store department.) See the article CommissAtuAT.
and the article ORDNANCE DEPARTMENT.
'Citoss, VtaronrA.—This distinction is also applicable to the navy.
DEPoTs.—There are as many depots as there are battalions, the depots being main tamed for the sake of training and recruiting at the new depot centers. The headquar ters of the battalion are not at the depot, but with the service companies. Each battal ion has two companies at the depot, and in time of war these would be the nucleus of a third battalion for that particular sub-district. See DEPOT.