Isolation of West Pointers—College graduates not dissociated from the community—The monastic ideal of the founder of West Point—And the caste ideal—The officer a cleat on the escalator of promotion—Out of contact with America—Five years to make a soldier—A clan tradition—A blank check to the regulars.

Before our entry into the war our busy people had occasional reminders that we had a United States Military Academy for training army officers. Its gray walls on the bluffs at West Point were one of the sights of the Hudson valley to passengers on river steamers. There was an annual football game between the West Point and Annapolis cadets. As every schoolboy knew, both teams were better than those of the small eastern colleges, but not so good as those of the large eastern colleges. The cadets were in the inaugural parade. Their marching thrilled observers with an excellence which, however, is always expected from professionals, whether ballplayers, billiardists, actors, pugilists, circus performers, opera singers, or poets. It was the cadets' business to march well. Of course they were superior to amateurs in their own line. Investigations of "hazing" had also at one time attracted wide attention to the Academy. Some of us were horrified, and others of us amused—still others disinterested as long as they did not have to take the dose themselves—at reports of first-class men having to swallow large draughts of tabasco sauce in order to toughen their stomachs for the horrors of war.

A community which sent only an occasional boy to West Point sent many boys to civil colleges. I was one of the boys who went to a civil college, and knew how we felt in our time. We returned at the end of our freshman year with the attitude of "How little they know!" as we looked around our native town. During our college career we spent our holidays in home surroundings, which formed a break in college influences. At the end of our senior year we had the "rah! rah!" spirit of class, alma mater, and college fraternity, and a feeling that the men who went to the principal collegiate football rival were of a low caste. We were graduated full of theories and wisdom, and set out to earn a living and incidentally to demonstrate how little "they" really knew. By the time we were able to earn a living we concluded that "they" had known more than we thought.

In fact, we ourselves now belonged to the "theys" struggling in the great competition of professional and industrial life. We met men who had not been to college, who were the betters of college men. Having left college sworn to keep the fraternity first in our hearts and to write frequently to our friends, other interests and other acquaintances took our time. Meeting men from the deadly football rival, we found that they were the same kind of men as ourselves. We went to the annual football game and to class reunions where the old spirit revived transiently, and old memories were recalled as we met our old mates; but we found that we had not as much in common with them, beyond memories, as we had had in our youth. They had gone into different occupations, developed different tastes, and enjoyed varying measures of success. Some had become rich and famous; some had gone into politics; some had achieved respectable citizenship and some had failed. Jones at the head of the class had not done well; Smith at the foot had become a power in the world. Robinson, who had not been a remarkable scholar in his youth, was now a great professor. Brown, who had been a most serious student, was interested only in his golf score; Higgins, who had barely escaped expulsion for frivolity, was a serious judge. Larkin, who had been pointed out as a born leader of men at twenty-one, was a follower of meager influence. All this proved that college was only a curriculum in studies and basic character-building, while development came in after life from inherent vitality, persistence, latent talent, health, environment, and innumerable influences.

The occasional West Pointer who returned home at the end of his second year with squared shoulders and chin drawn in had become far more dissociated from his surroundings than the freshman of a civil college. He too was thinking, "How little they know!" After his graduation, except for a rare visit to his parents, he had ceased to be a part of the home community. He was here and there at army posts, and serving in the Philippines. It was not unlikely that he had been a poor boy. I have known instances where boys had to borrow the money to travel to West Point. Many of the appointees had no particular call to the profession of arms; but they knew and their parents knew that from the day he entered the academy a cadet would not require a cent from home or have to "work his way," or win a scholarship. The nation took him under its wing. In order to receive an appointment it was well to know the local Congressman or a Senator, even in these days of competitive examinations.

The appointment of poor boys to be officers had the appeal of democracy. It was a system devised in the days following the Revolution, when in England commissions in the red-coats were bought and sold, and only the sons of the gentry became officers. West Point, now well over a hundred years old, was at first an engineering school, but the real founder of the academy of today was Sylvanus Thayer, who had Prussian ideas of the same kind as von Steuben, drillmaster of the Revolutionary armies. He was of the old school of martinets, who proposed to establish in the midst of this pioneering, lawless, new country an institution where pupils could be caught young and so disciplined and formed that they would be worthy of the strictest European military tradition. In return for this privilege, the Congressman was to have the power of appointment. Congress accepted the idea. It did not interfere with the militia organizations, or any group of amateurs, or the conviction that any man in his shirt-sleeves and with a squirrel rifle was the equal of any European regular. At the same time it trained some really professional officers, who might become generals in time of war. Moreover, it was democratic; this was the compelling argument. America was opportunity; a poor boy might become a general; the Congressman might select the poor boy who was to be a general.

The founder was a wise man and a stern one. He set the tradition which endured; he put the cadets into the uniform which we see in the cuts of Wellington's veterans who fought at Waterloo, and which they were to wear for a hundred years. He put a stigma upon being "dropped" from the Academy, which was a counter to family and political influence for a softer course. Doubtless he foresaw that when the graduates were through with these hard four years, they would be a unit for its continuance, particularly as they had not to go through it again. He had no illusions about democracy; he knew that democracy was the curse of military discipline. He believed in an officer caste; there could not be a good army without caste. If he could not have students from families belonging to the officer caste according to European traditions, he would make them gentlemen. They would be taught to dance, and initiated into a code of officer ethics and etiquette. In later times the Point had its polo team, a luxury which only rich youth could afford.

This did not imply any relaxation of that severe rÉgime in which theoretically only the fittest were to survive. The cadets might not smoke cigarettes or drink; they might not go skylarking to neighboring towns. Their every hour of drill, study, and recreation was counted. Far from the freedom of the elective course, every mind and body was filled into a mold a century old. Three-fourths of the study was scholastic; only a fourth, outside the drill, could be classed as strictly military: for the cadets were supposed to receive the equivalent of a collegiate education at the same time that they were being trained to be officers. With few exceptions their instructors were former graduates, called in from service with the army. Some of these might be rusty, compared to the experts of civil colleges, who gave their lives to specializing in one branch; but civilian teachers could not supply military discipline and atmosphere.

The boy who went to West Point was an average boy. At an impressionable age he entered a world as isolated and self-centered as that of a monastery. The effects of college and fraternity spirit were many times intensified. He had almost no opportunities of renewing the associations of civil life; all was of the army, for the army, and by the army. Though he served in the ranks as a cadet, he never served in the ranks as a soldier. His "How little they know!" was not to suffer the shock of competitive strife with the millions of other boys whom he was to lead as a general. His quality of leadership had been tested only in marks on drill and scholarship.

When he was graduated, he became an officer, his position assured for life. The fellows of his school days who went into professions had to have their way paid, or to work their way, through college and professional school, and then slowly build up a practice. All this the West Pointer had free, as the gift of his country, in the name of democracy. His income would be more than equal to that of the average graduate of our leading law and medical schools, with the certainty of sufficient pay to care for his old age when he was retired. Once an officer, he could lean back on his oars if he chose,—the hardest work of his career having been finished when other boys are beginning theirs. He became a cleat on the slow-moving escalator of promotion, waiting on the death and retirement of seniors or the expansion of the army. There were other cleats than those with the West Point marking, those of officers who had worked their way up from the ranks, and a larger class which had come in through examination; but the West Point spirit was dominant. The West Pointer was a West Pointer; his tradition the tradition of the army.

Superb of health, and hardened of physique, the graduate, I should add, need not continue the West Point rÉgime after his graduation. He might neglect exercise to the point that led President Roosevelt to issue his order compelling tests of physical endurance, which led to such an uproar in army circles. Roosevelt proceeded on the sound principle that capacity for enormous and sudden physical strain is a prime requisite—as the Great War so abundantly proved—for leading infantry on marches and in battle, and for sleeping on the ground.

Occasionally a West Pointer may have had some of his illusions about "they" amended by his colonel; but anything like a full revelation was out of the question. The young lieutenant, when he went to an army post at home or in the Philippines, found himself in the same isolated world of army thought and associations. The troops he commanded hardly put him in touch with the average of citizens. They were men who, in a country which did not feel the call to military service, enlisted for $17.50 a month and the security of army life, oftener than for adventure or ambition. Between them and their officers there was as broad a gulf as between any officer class in Europe and their soldiers. All standards were set on the time required to drill these recruits and form them in the regular army mould.

When officers met, ten or twenty years after graduation or receiving their commissions, they found none of the changes of fortune which alumni of civil colleges found. Everyone was in the same relative rank as when he became a second lieutenant. The army opposed promotion by selection, as that meant "political" influence and favoritism. Promotion by selection was against the law, except that the President might, if he chose, make a second lieutenant a brigadier or major-general with the consent of the Senate. The promotion of Wood, Bell, Funston, and Pershing to be brigadiers over the heads of many seniors led to no end of ill-feeling in the army, which made these ambitious and able officers the victims of an unpopularity which only time and the retirement of older officers could overcome.

They had all distinguished themselves in the Spanish War, which had awakened us to a realization that though we had excellent regiments, which exhibited all the sturdy and dependable qualities of the regulars, we had no army organization. Under Secretary Root we developed the staff school and the school of the line at Leavenworth, and the War College at Washington, as a series of schools where ambitious officers could study tactics, specialize in different branches, form paper armies, and direct them in the field. The Staff College applied West Point industry. Its students worked long hours in the enthusiasm of mastering their profession. It was necessarily scholastic. I remember seeing, soon after the Russo-Japanese War, a combat maneuver of a few companies in the fields at Leavenworth. It was carried out in a manner that would have mortified a young reserve officer in France. Some of the soldiers participating had had two and three years' service. In wonted freedom of speech I suggested that with three months' training companies of college men, farm-hands, elevator boys, brakemen, firemen, clerks, and managers, drawn from civil life, could be taught to perform this maneuver better than we had just seen it performed. There was a chorus of protest, particularly from the older officers, who were saying that the trouble was that these men had not had enough drill: it took five years to make a soldier. Not all the younger officers joined in this view. One had the courage to express his opinion: "You're right—provided those citizens you mention put their hearts and intelligence into the job. Give them six months, with enough experts to train them, and plenty of war material to back them; shoot over them a few times—and I'd ask nothing better than to lead them." He was to live to see his heresy become orthodoxy; to see West Point receiving lessons in democracy from American soldiery.

Upon our entry into the war, our officers might have been divided into three classes: (A), including about ten per cent of the whole, officers who were the best of the Leavenworth graduates: officers who had shown administrative ability and natural leadership; officers who were in touch with the world, alert, vital, with strong constitutions, and the capacity of meeting situations. These men would have done well in any occupation in civil life. (B), average officers, devoted to their duty, consistently efficient. These represented about forty per cent. They would have been moderately successful in civil life. (C), the remaining fifty per cent, of varying degrees of capacity. They included the officers who kept step and escaped courts, those without ambition, those who had not grown since they received their commissions, the fussy sticklers for etiquette without power of initiative, those who avoided any extra work, those who were never meant to lead men in battle. This class, with few exceptions, would not have been successful in civil life; not good lawyers or doctors, railroad men or mechanics. They would never have earned the pay they received anywhere but in the army.

Taken as a whole, the average was about the same as in any group of men; it was high, indeed, considering the absence of incentive and of competition. Then there were the unknown quantities in every class: the officers whose latent powers, hitherto undetected, came into play under the call of emergency; and the officers who disappointed expectations formed in peace when they were put to the test of war.

All of them were fellows in the life of the post, where the feminine element had its influence. Almost without exception they lived modestly on their pay. Everyone knew the other's income. The rank of wives was that of their husbands. The officer commanding was the head of the family. All the jealousies of any isolated community were in play. There was bound to be intrigue for good assignments, not only in Washington and favorite posts at home, but in the Philippines; but there was no such thing as corruption. The army was straight; its code of honor was unimpeachable, except in the influences for good assignments. There were hops and dinners, and visiting back and forth. Inner feelings might be strong, but they must be kept under the mantle of formal politeness; for you did not choose your companions. They were chosen by army orders. Everything was official, and what was not was rank.

Talk at the bachelor messes and at all gatherings was about "shop": which left the outsider as detached as a railroad man attending a convention of chemists. The lack of common themes was one reason for absence of contact with the "they" of the outside world. The army register was the most read of books. It showed where all your friends were serving, and also you could reckon when you would receive your promotion, and when perhaps you might have a separate command, with husband and wife outranking all present and having to follow the views of no senior in matters of routine. Strong and biting criticisms were exchanged of fellow officers, whose nicknames of cadet days remained,—whether "Rusty," or "Poppy," "Wooden-headed Charlie," "Slow Bill," "Pincushion Pete," or "Noisy Tom." Smith had gone to seed. How Jones had ever been able to graduate from the Point was past understanding. Robinson managed more good appointments with less ability than any man in the service. All belonged to the army; in the presence of the outside world there could be no fault in the army. Officers stood together; they stood up for their men, no matter how mercilessly they "bawled them out" at drill. In the background at drill and in the barracks were the sergeants and corporals, the "non-coms," who shaped the "rookies" into soldiers, and who carried on all the routine drills. Old soldiers, they had fallen into the habit of army life. Their position in our democratic country lacked the importance that it enjoyed in European armies. In the offices were the field clerks, who ran the typewriters and carried on office routine.

Among the officers the college spirit backing the football team for victory, and that of the secret society and of the trade-union, were inevitably, as in all officers' corps, united in the common fealty of self-protection. The army was always fighting for its rights against an unappreciative nation. Secretly it was always against each administration. Roosevelt was almost hated at one time. Later he was admired. Congress was regarded as a natural enemy which cut down appropriations. Civilian secretaries of war, who came into office without the slightest knowledge of the character of the military service, fell into the hands of a clique of officers close to the throne. Unless you had a friend among them, you might not count on good assignments, said the pessimistic of class C.

The feeling that the army was underpaid was as common as that it was unappreciated. Officers, thinking only of the men in civil life who succeeded, complained that they could not associate with the outside world because they had not the money to keep up their social end. The dream of every officer was of a great conscript army, like the French or German. This meant promotion, of course, and that the army would count for something in the country, though the thought was not consciously selfish on the part of the best men. It was professional and natural human ambition, based on the conviction of the necessity of military training for every citizen. Without it an officer could not be a good soldier. It was a better spirit than that of the time-servers of class C, who were interested in promotion alone, and in passing the time.

The prospect of Japan taking the Pacific Coast was the main item of propaganda before the Great War began. Then Germany, or the victor in the war, was seen devastating our coasts, his great guns toppling our cities in ruins, and his infantry sweeping across country, perpetrating the horrors of Belgium. Any officer who knew his profession in the large, knew—despite the figures assembled for its proof—that the transport of forces for a successful invasion was out of the question; but such methods of making the flesh creep alone could awaken an indifferent public to the necessity of an adequate army and the value of military drill to our heterogeneous population. The regulars saw us depending against trained hosts upon citizens in shirt-sleeves and the undisciplined National Guard. "They" of the outside world were concerned only with their own prosperity—undisciplined, utterly without the military sense or spirit. War was a biological necessity. There had always been war, and there always would be war. One day we would find ourselves at war. The nation would call for soldiers, and the little band of regulars would go forth to sacrifice. Meanwhile, in the midst of ignorance, they would keep the altar fires burning, and remain true to the traditions of their profession.

Then a miracle happened. The dream of the regulars came true. There were to be no political generals: none were to be rewarded with commissions for raising regiments, as in the Civil War. We were to have the draft; all direction was to be left to the professional. The nation signed a check upon all our resources, human and material, to be filled out by them. Our people offered all they had in order to save civilization. Their thought was the interest of their souls, their country, humanity, and their future happiness and prosperity.

To the army officers war was their occupation: a viewpoint entirely different. Glorious opportunity had burst the door of their isolation wide open, beckoning them to power. It was the same to them as if overnight the stocks in a land company had jumped a thousand per cent owing to the discovery of oil on its property. Majors and captains of classes B and C were to be colonels of regiments of three thousand men, more than colonels, and many brigadiers, had ever commanded. All the officers of class A might now carry out their theories in practice: they might aim for the command, not of paper, but of real armies in battle. Only a few had been in touch with the psychology of the country. The country was swarming in upon them. Was it surprising that some of class C and class B and even of class A felt, at the prospect of enlightening the ignorance of the manhood of all the United States, a constriction of cap-bands which had formerly been large enough?

For recruit officers of this enormous new army we turned to our colleges and technical schools. This was an educational test, but the only one that could be hurriedly applied. The average of the candidates for the officers' training camps must be as naturally capable as the average of army officers. They must possess a class A, drawn from men already tested in civil life, which would be equal in brain power to class A on the army list; and it must be relatively larger, considering how few army officers there were and how numerous were the educated, intelligent, and ambitious youth of our country. Among those who were only privates in the swarms of volunteers who enlisted immediately upon our entry into the war were privates to whom nature had given a natural capacity for leadership which no curriculum of a military school or civil college could supply; who were to take the leadership of companies out of the hands of men who had an "A plus" in calculus, surveying, and Latin. After the volunteers, the draft men began arriving at the training camps in excursion parties.

"When I saw them piling off the train," said one regular officer, "the undisciplined sons of an undisciplined people, I wondered what they would do to us. They had not been in camp a day before I knew that they were going to play the game." It had never occurred to him, his horizon restricted from his juvenile days at the Academy, that there was discipline in the running of our railroads, our industries, our labor unions, our societies, our lodges, and in all the team-play of our sports; that we were all used to obeying orders in the process of earning a living or winning a baseball game. Those boys among the volunteers and in the draft were of the same kind as the boys who went to the Point to become members of the officer class. There had been no such military marvel in all history as the willingness of our people to yield authority which the British had granted only after painful stages of inveterate resistance. It was all inexpressibly magnificent; a better proof of strength and character than any form of routine military preparedness. Given such a spirit—a spirit the stronger for the dislike of military forms and the aversion to war—and we could no more fail of victory in the end than you can exterminate the Jewish race. Without that spirit nations decay and fail, for war does not form character: war only expresses the character formed in peace.

Every volunteer and draft private, every would-be officer, realized his ignorance, as a neophyte about to be initiated into professional mystery. He had the willingness to conform, the eagerness to learn, of the neophyte. No teachers were ever safer from scepticism on the part of their pupils. The West Point discipline was applied. It taught the drillmaster's fundamentals of forming good physique and habits of strict routine. For this, great credit is due. This host of recruits, American in intelligence and adaptability, "playing the game," never able to answer back, rigid at salute, imbibing the instruction of class A or enduring the outbursts of temper in good army "bawling out" language from class C, formed a silent body of criticism which became increasingly discriminate with growth of knowledge. The instructors did not forget that the course at West Point was four years, though they did forget that three-fourths of the curriculum consisted of elementals learned at a civil school. They did forget their association with the "rookies" who became privates of regulars in time of peace. Holding fast to these criteria, they overlooked how fast the average youth of America could learn when he put his heart and mind into intensive study and drill.