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.