Officers are selected for duty at the Academy by the Heads of Departments who make every effort to secure men especially qualified for the work. For example, the instructors in the Department of Engineering are all Engineer officers; in Ordnance and Gunnery, mostly Ordnance officers; in Chemistry and Electricity, usually Coast Artillery officers; in Mathematics, officers of the staff and line who excelled in this study as cadets; in English and History, line officers with recognized literary tendencies; in Languages, officers whose advantages have enabled them to acquire a good speaking knowledge of either French or Spanish. Until the outbreak of the European War, officers on duty in the Department of Languages were ordered to spend the summer in study in either France or Spain. They thereby were able to perfect their knowledge to an extent that rendered them most efficient instructors. Detailed to this Department are two native Spaniards and two Frenchmen, whose services are employed to carry along the instruction of the officer instructors as well as that of the cadets, so that every opportunity is offered to the cadet to progress as far as his ability will permit him in the time allotted these studies.
The time of the officer is well employed while on duty at the Academy. In those departments whose period of recitation is an hour and a half, he has two sections daily, but if the period is one hour, he instructs three sections. He averages, therefore, from fifteen to eighteen hours of actual teaching per week. To this amount must be added the conferences of the instructors, conducted either by the Professor or one of his assistants. These conferences are held, usually daily, and vary from one to two hours and cover the material in the lesson or in advance work. By means of these conferences, the Professor is able to standardize the teaching without restricting the personality or individuality of his officers.
The routine work, that is, the keeping of records, weekly reports, the correcting of exercises, problems, and compositions, all demand a greater or less amount of time, and then what is most important, the instructor must spend many hours in preparation. I have known many instructors to work every night until midnight after the routine work of the day.
In the demand upon an officer’s time, consideration is given the fact that with him teaching is an incident in his career, and he must therefore have at his disposal, whether he uses it or not, at least a couple of hours per day for professional work and study. When absent from troops an officer becomes more or less rusty upon the duties of his arm, and he should, consequently, by reading, the solution of problems, writing or what not, keep up with the progress made in his branch of the Service.
General Orders of the Army prescribe also that at least one hour per day must be employed in bodily exercise, riding, walking, tennis, golf, swimming, polo, etc., and the officer is required to submit a certificate stating that he has taken the prescribed amount.
I give in somewhat tedious detail the employment of the officer’s time, because so frequently I hear, expressed by the layman, the opinion that officers of the Army have practically nothing to do. It is ordinarily difficult to disabuse their mind of this idea, chiefly because it is already made up. A visitor arrives at West Point to spend the day and seeing a few officers playing golf in the morning he assumes that all officers have nothing to do. He perhaps little realizes that the same golfers, or tennis players, are trying to get their exercise at a time that will not interfere with their academic duties that begin for each department at varying hours. That same officer, who plays a game of golf at 9:30 A.M., will in all probability spend a part of the forenoon and afternoon with the cadets, and all evening in preparation. Appearances are often very deceptive. This is particularly true in the Army, which has been, until the war came upon us, subject to more unjust criticism than any other professional body.
In order to facilitate the instruction, the cadets are arranged in four distinct classes, corresponding with the four years of study. The cadets in the first year’s course constitute the Fourth Class, those in the second year’s course, the Third Class, those in the third year’s course the Second Class, and those in the fourth year’s course the First Class. The designation of senior, junior, sophomore, and freshman is not used at West Point as in colleges and universities, but the terms “Yearling” and “Plebe” are familiarly applied to cadets of the third and fourth classes respectively. The advancement of the cadets from one class to another is based upon proficiency in their studies, the details of which will be found in the chapter on “The Discipline of the Mind.”
In order to distinguish the classes one from another, the device of putting bands of braid on the sleeve of the uniform has been adopted. These lengths of mohair are called service stripes and are issued one for each year of service, so that the “plebe” sleeve is bare, the “yearling” has a single stripe, the second classmen, two stripes, the first classmen, three stripes. This insignia is of black braid for all gray uniforms except the full dress coat, on which gold braid is used. The chevrons, although primarily a designation of rank, also serve to distinguish some members of the classes. The cadet officers and the sergeants are members of the First Class and the corporals are of the Second Class. To many people, chevrons, or insignia or rank, means nothing. Girls especially have so little idea of their significance that they readily swallow anything a cadet tells them. It is the same today as of yore. I was at a hop not long ago when I overheard a young miss say to her cadet escort, who had just lost his chevrons, been “busted” as the cadets say:
“Why don’t you wear some of those lovely gold stripes on your arm?”
“Well—er—you see,” replied the ‘buck,’ “why that’s a sort of private matter with me now.”