and whether, in accordance with the provisions of said article, you may detail certain officers of the Marine Corps now in charge of staff departments at headquarters to duty outside of Washington in charge of other offices of the departments to which they belong, and may assign other officers of said departments to duty at headquarters in charge of the staff departments there. Said article 4141, as quoted by you, provides: "4141. The officers of the staff departments of the Marine Corps shall be stationed at such places as may be designated by the commandant of the corps. They shall have cognizance of such matters and shall perform such duties as may be required by or in pursuance of law, or that may be assigned by the commandant of the corps.' You do not directly call my attention to the provisions of law with which the article is claimed to conflict, but from the accompanying papers I infer that it is the general statute or statutes organizing the Marine Corps and creating or recognizing the officers which constitute its staff. The present provision of law on the subject is section 22 of the act of March 3, 1899, ch. 413 (30 Stat. 1004, 1009), which reads, in so far as material, as follows: "SEC. 22. That the staff of the Marine Corps shall consist of one adjutant and inspector, one quartermaster and one paymaster, each with the rank of colonel; one assistant adjutant and inspector, two assistant quartermasters and one assistant paymaster, each with the rank of major; and three assistant quartermasters with the rank of captain. This enactment, however, does but repeat the provisions of prior statutes, by virtue of which an adjutant was provided for the Marine Corps as early as July 11, 1798 (1 Stat. 594), and the quartermaster and paymaster at least as early as April 16, 1814 (3 Stat. 124). The act of March 3, 1899, supra, simply increases the number of assistants to the three principal staff officers. It is to be noted that in none of these acts are the duties and functions of the three staff officers in question at all specified, but it can not on this account be held that the statute itself imposes none. On the contrary, it is clear that their duties and functions were presumed by Congress to be so well understood as not to require specific mention, as is the case with many officers, e. g., sheriffs, justices of the peace, etc. In United States v. San Jacinto Tin Co. (125 U. S. 273, 280), the Supreme Court said that the judiciary act of September 24, 1789, in providing for an Attorney General of the United States, "must have had reference to the similar office with the same designation existing under the English law." In order, therefore, to give just effect to the legislation of Congress referred to above, it is necessary to determine' the duties of the three staff officers in question as generally, and for a long time, understood. Without going into details, it is enough to say broadly that the adjutant is the aid of the commander in maintaining military discipline; that the quartermaster attends to the supplies of the command, and the paymaster to the payment thereof. The particulars are stated with special reference to the Marine Corps in the Navy Regulations of 1909, Chapter XXXII, section 3, pages 349-354-and see the report of the commandant of the corps in 1821 (Am. St. Papers Naval Affairs, Vol. I, p. 737). Congress, therefore, under its constitutional power has created these three staff officers of the Marine Corps-and certain assistants to them-with all the functions and duties briefly described above. A regulation, therefore, which would deprive them of these functions, or place them in a situation where they would be unable to perform them, is necessarily invalid. (U. S. v. Symonds, 120 U. S. 46.) An examination of article 4141, supra, shows it to be of this character. It is true that the regulation provides—it would appear without any necessity-that the staff officers shall perform such duties as are required by law, but it also requires them to perform such other duties, and be stationed at such places as may be assigned by the commandant. This, then, purports to give the power to the commandantwhether ever exercised or not is immaterial-permanently to impose duties upon these staff officers inconsistent with those of an adjutant, quartermaster, and paymaster of the Marine Corps, and to detach them permanently from the headquarters of the command-the only place where, in the nature of things, those duties can be regularly performed. I do not intend to intimate the least doubt that the President, as Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy, may make temporary detail of staff officers away from the headquarters of their command or order them to perform temporarily additional duties in the line of their staff functions or outside of them, but the regulation in question does not purport to do this, but affects to lay down a general rule unlimited as to occasions, by which the seat of duty of these staff officers-whoever they may be-and the duties themselves are to be determined. In the able briefs submitted by the Judge Advocate General of the Navy, many objections are urged to the above conclusion. Space permits only a brief answer to what appear the most important. 1. Reference is made to the Navy Regulations of 1841, which provided (art. 2): "The headquarters and the staff of the Marine Corps shall continue at the city of Washington until otherwise specially directed by the President of the United States or Secretary of the Navy." From this it is argued that the staff may be removed from headquarters by such direction. The true inference, however, appears to be just the contrary. The article clearly shows that the headquarters and the staff were considered inseparable, so that when the President was given power to remove one, the other must necessarily be moved also. 2. Reference is made to section 1547, Revised Statutes, which provides: "SEC. 1547. The orders, regulations, and instructions issued by the Secretary of the Navy prior to July 14, 1862, with such alterations as he may since have adopted, with the approval of the President, shall be recognized as the regulations of the Navy, subject to alterations adopted in the same manner." It is argued that this section gives the force of statutory law to article 4141, supra. But clearly section 1547 gives no power to the President to make regulations in the future in contravention of existing statutes, and that is the character, in my judgment, of article 4141. As said by Attorney General Hoar of a similar provision in the act of July 14, 1862 (13 Op. 9, 12): 66 ** No just rule of construction would authorize giving to this provision the force and effect of a general delegation of legislative authority to the Executive, at his pleasure to pass upon and regulate subjects which were, in their own nature, exclusively subjects of legislative action and cognizance, or which Congress had previously fixed by law, and which the regulations thereby recognized had not undertaken to modify or alter." 3. It is generally argued that the staff of the Marine Corps consists merely of the departments of the adjutant and inspector, quartermaster, and paymaster, respectively; that the adjutant and inspector, quartermaster, and paymaster themselves are, like their assistants, merely officers in those departments and subject, therefore, like those assistants, to be stationed in such places and perform such duties as the proper exigencies of the staff as a whole require. In other words, that the duties of an adjutant, etc., which I have described above, are vested by law not in the adjutant, etc., themselves, but in their departments. This, however, is directly contrary to the enactment of Congress, which has vested these duties not in any department, but in an adjutant and inspector, etc., and their assistants. The word"assistant can not be taken out of the statute and clearly means that the duties of these officers are subordinate. The appropriation acts do not speak of any adjutant and inspector's department, etc., but of the civil force "in the office of the adjutant and inspector "— e. g., act of August 22, 1912 (37 Stat. 351). This act also appropriates for the civil force "in the office of the assistant quartermaster at San Francisco." Can there be any doubt from this that the office of the quartermaster is at headquarters, and that the office at San Francisco is that of an assistant? In short, it is, in my judgment, clearly inconsistent with the acts of Congress relating to the staff of the Marine Corps up to and including section 22 of the act of March. 3, 1899, to relegate, e. g., the quartermaster to the position of an officer in his own department and to raise one of his assistants to a position not recognized in the statutes, namely, "officer in charge of the quartermaster's department," and this I understand article 4141 to permit and you to intend by virtue of it. I have the honor to be, Your obedient servant, J. C. McREYNOLDS. TO THE SECRETARY OF THE NAVY. DUTY OF SECRETARY OF WAR WITH RESPECT TO LINCOLN MEMORIAL. Under the act of February 9, 1911 (36 Stat. 898), creating the Lincoln Memorial Commission, the Secretary of War must proceed upon the view that it is his duty to enter into such contracts only as, in his opinion, are proper and necessary to carry into fruition the plan and design of the memorial approved by Congress. If for any reason the course suggested proves to be impracticable, the matter should be brought to the attention of Congress, with a request for a remedy. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, SIR: I have the honor to reply to your letter of October 20, wherein you ask to be advised concerning your rights and duties under the act of Congress, approved February 9, 1911 (36 Stat. 898), entitled "An act to provide a commission to secure plans and designs for a monument or memorial to the memory of Abraham Lincoln. The first section of the act creates William H. Taft and others a commission to procure and determine upon a location, plan, and design for the monument or memorial, subject to the approval of Congress. The second section authorizes the commission to employ the services of artists, sculptors, architects, and others, as it shall determine to be necessary. The third section follows: "That the construction of the monument or memorial, herein and hereby authorized, shall be upon such site as |