So I made another successful appeal to the Secretary.

Other difficulties came up about wagons, and various articles, and in each case the same result followed.

On the last occasion, when I came up in triumph with the needed order, the worried office head, who bore me no animosity, but who did feel that fate had been very unkind, threw himself back in his chair and exclaimed with a sigh: "Oh, dear! I had this office running in such good shape--and then along came the war and upset everything!" His feeling was that war was an illegitimate interruption to the work of the War Department.
There were of course department heads and bureau chiefs and assistants who, in spite of the worthlessness of the system, and of the paralyzing conditions that had prevailed, remained first-class men.

An example of these was Commissary-General Weston.

His energy, activity, administrative efficiency, and common sense were supplemented by an eager desire to help everybody do the best that could be done.