The scales seem to drop from his eyes. He is no longer concerned so completely with his troubles and difficulties, with his inability to get into his white trousers without mussing them badly, with his capacity for doing “wooden” things, or with all of the thousand and one little heartburns for things done and left undone.
On the contrary, the incidents of his surroundings that are unrelated to himself begin to interest him. With quiet amusement he watches the antics of the yearlings, envying them their careless nonchalant air. His heart goes out in sympathy to some fellow plebe who has just incurred the displeasure of an upper-classman. He secretly admires the military bearing of the cadet officers, the fit of their blouses, their erect and graceful carriage. To him they represent the ideal in the flesh toward which he is striving. There is a certain something about the manner in which they perform their duties that inspires the plebe to extra efforts. In the hope of receiving a word of praise from the cadet captain at inspection before parade, an extra rub is given to the rifle or breastplate, and more care is taken in climbing into those stiff white trousers. He listens with the greatest interest to the chatter about the approaching Academic term and accepts with gratitude the counsels sometimes offered him by the cadet captain.
As the camp draws to a close, not only the captain but all of the upper-classmen give the plebe gratuitous advice about the coming Academic year. At every formation while awaiting the sounding of the assembly, little groups gather in the company streets and interrogate the plebes as to their previous mental training. A note of restlessness begins to pervade the camp as the month of September draws nigh. Once again the books must be taken down from the shelves and hours of study devoted to the solution of problems.
The plebe views the close of the camp with a sigh of relief mingled with not a little anxiety. It is true that he is glad to get into barracks where he will have a little more personal liberty, and be free from the incessant drilling, drilling. On the other hand, the opening of the Academic year fills him with some misgivings about his ability to master the studies and fulfill his ambition to become an officer.
Before he is really aware of the flight of the days, September the first has arrived. He leaves the life of camp where almost the entire day has been devoted to military exercises of one sort or another and plunges into the Academic work. A new sort of life begins and the routine of the day is readjusted. With determination he sets out to climb the stony path of knowledge that alone will lead him to his commission. The branch of the service that he will eventually select is as yet unknown to him, but as he proceeds in his career at the Academy he will have a taste of the duties of each arm, and he will later on be able to choose his branch with intelligence.
The beauty about the West Point system of training officers is that it educates them for all branches of the Army, for the line and for the staff. When a man graduates, he is assigned either to the Corps of Engineers, the Ordnance, Artillery, Cavalry, or Infantry according to his choice based on his class standing. The highest men usually select the Corps of Engineers, although it is not unusual for a man who is recommended for the Engineers by the Academic Board to choose some branch of the mobile Army.
The curriculum to which our young cadet must devote nine months of the year is highly scientific and technical. The corner-stone of the course is mathematics, and the great mass of the structure is made up of the exact sciences. Primarily, the curriculum is designed to give the cadet a liberal education and to turn out a man with sharpened mental processes. It does not lay the greatest emphasis upon the training of cadets in the practical duties that pertain to any particular arm or corps. The reasons for this are very sound.
It is the belief of all officers who have given the question of military education any thoughtful study that the first requisite of any army is a corps of officers trained in the essentials of their profession. What really does this mean? It simply means that officers of the Army should be well educated men, not only those who are to go into the technical branches such as the Engineers and the Ordnance, but the line officers as well. The authorities at West Point have therefore developed a broad scientific course, fully convinced that the mental discipline, powers of investigation, and accurate reasoning necessary in solving problems in the exact sciences are the same mental qualities that are needed whether in planning a great campaign, building a Panama Canal, or fighting the savage Moro in the distant Philippines.
The advisability of giving all cadets, those destined for the line as well as for the staff, the same education has been questioned more than once. As long ago as 1843, a Board of Officers, of which General Scott was president, made certain criticisms of the course of instruction. It is interesting to quote the answer made by the Academic Board, for the ideas set forth therein express in general the opinions held today:
The Academic Board believes that one of the most important objects of the Academy is to subject each cadet, previous to his promotion to a higher grade in the Army, to a thorough course of mental as well as military discipline to teach him to reason readily and accurately to apply right principles to cases of daily occurrence in the life of a soldier. They are satisfied that a strict course of mathematical and philosophical study, with applications to the various branches of military science, is by far the best calculated to bring about this end, and that the present scientific course at the Academy, the result of the experience of many years, is in its main feature such a course.
They are aware that many of the cadets, as is the case with most of those who pursue a scientific course at other institutions, will have little occasion to make practical applications of the many mathematical problems that they meet, and that they may have passed over certain problems without thoroughly understanding their meaning in all their points. Still, if the course has been thoroughly taught, the reasoning faculties will have been strongly exercised and disciplined and a system of habit and thought acquired which is invaluable in the pursuit of any profession, and as desirable for the infantry or dragoon officer as for any other officer in the service. The officer whose mind has thus been disciplined and who is not forgetful of the duty he owes to the government that has furnished him with opportunities so valuable, will acquire facts and information in whatever station the interests of the service may place him. This discipline and system he will learn at an early age only, and nowhere so well as during his term of service at the Academy.