A SUDDEN GRIND AT MATH.
Had Dick's been the first door opened six cadets would have been
instantly in serious trouble.
Fortunately the door across the corridor was the first to be opened,
and the six on this side of the hallway heard another cadet's voice
call quietly:
"Attention!"
It was, therefore, a tactical officer making an inspection.
At the United States Military Academy the superintendent, who
has the local rank of colonel, is at the head of this government
institution in all its departments.
Discipline, however, and training in tactics, comes within the
especial province of another officer, known as the commandant of
cadets, who ranks locally as a lieutenant-colonel, and who gets in
closer touch with the cadet corps.
Under the commandant of cadets are several other Army officers,
captains and lieutenants, who take upon themselves the numerous
duties of which the commandant has oversight. These subordinate
officers in the tactical department are known as tactical officers.
The cadets call them "tac.s."
Each day one of these "tac.s" is in charge at the office of the
commandant, which is in cadet headquarter's building, on the
south side of the area of cadet barracks.
This officer, who is in charge for a full period of twenty-four
hours, when his turn comes, is officially designated as the "officer
in charge." Among the cadets he is privately referred to as the
"O.C." In a similar way, in cadet parlance, the commandant himself
is known as the "K.C."
Now, one of the numerous duties of the O.C., who is an Army
officer and himself a graduate of West Point, is to make sudden,
unexpected tours of inspection whenever the fancy--or the
suspicion--seizes him.
Such an inspection need by no means extend through the whole of
cadet barracks. It may, for that matter, be only to one subdivision,
or even to a single floor or room of one subdivision. Yet record
must be kept of such inspections, and of any offenses against
discipline that may be discovered by such a flying visit.
A scrap of paper on the floor, a match end on a study table, any
article of furniture or clothing out of its proper place, or any
undress or untidiness on the part of a cadet, constitutes a breach of
discipline, and must be reported and atoned for. Naturally, a case
of hazing would be a most serious "delinquency," as breaches of
discipline are termed.
Just what Captain Vesey, O.C., on this day, expected to discover
through the present flying inspection will never be known. If he
had tried Dick's door first. [Transcriber's note: missing text?]
But he didn't.
However, there was no chance whatever for Yearlings Pratt and
Judson to retreat unseen. The door across the hall had been left
open, and the tac. would be sure to detect their sudden departure.
Dick Prescott's first movement was to pounce upon his disordered
bedding, swiftly folding over the mattress, and laying the bed
clothing in the prescribed manner.
Then he tiptoed up to the dismayed Judson, whispering in that
yearling's ear as he knowingly winked at Pratt:
"If I'm not too abominably b.j., sir, won't you please come to my
table and help me bone math?"
It looked like a saving inspiration. As Dick slipped into his chair
he signed to Bert Dodge to stand at one end of the table. Judson
snatched up one of Dick's mathematical textbooks, opening to one
of the first pages at random. Dick turned sideways in his chair,
glancing up at the yearling with a rapt expression.
Yearling Pratt slipped into Greg's chair. Holmes and Anstey stood
on either side of him. Pratt began rapidly to sketch out a problem
that he chanced to remember from plebe year math.
Almost instantly the door swung open. Not one of the cadets
happened to be looking in that direction. As Captain Vesey, the
tac., white-gloved, stepped into the room he was just in time to
hear Cadet Judson say:
"Perhaps if you were to work out a formula in algebra, mister, you
would find the idea even more clear. But I think you understand it
now."
"Yes, sir, thank you," replied Cadet Prescott.
"This is the way I would explain the problem," murmured Mr.
Pratt, to Greg and Anstey. Just at that instant the yearling looked as
though butter couldn't melt in his mouth.
Turning a bit, Pratt caught sight of the tac., who stood looking on
as though transformed with wonder.
"Attention!" called Pratt at once.
All the others wheeled, Dick rising in order to do so. Six young
men who looked intensely earnest over study, faced the O.C.
respectfully.
Doubtless a bit taken back, certainly so if he had expected to find
anything wrong, Captain Vesey took two steps into the room,
glanced about him, then wheeled and walked out.
"I must be going now," uttered Yearling Judson a moment later.
"Call on me again, once in a while, if you need any help in math."
"Thank you very much, sir," murmured Cadet Prescott respectfully.
"Coming along now, Pratt?" called Judson.
"Yes; I must be getting back to my own bone," replied Yearling
Pratt.
It would have been out of the question for yearlings to thank
plebes for a service such as had just been rendered. So the late
hazers merely stepped from the room.
"Odd! Mighty queer!" muttered Captain Vesey to himself, as he
unhooked his sword and stood it in a corner over in the O.C.'s
office. "Mr. Judson and Mr. Pratt have a pretty bad reputation for
hazing. And yet, when I come upon them, it is to find them helping
the poor young greenhorns through the mazes of math. I wonder if
that was a put-up job on me."
"Well you are a silly ninny, Prescott!" uttered Cadet Dodge
disgustedly.
"Meaning--what?" asked Dick coolly.
"Those yearlings were just about caught redhanded."
"Yes."
"And you had to go to work and arrange amateur dramatics like a
flash. So when the tac. pops in here, he finds those most estimable
young ruffians conducting an innocent day school here!"
"Well?" demanded Prescott.
"Why didn't you leave it for that yearling couple to pull their own
chestnuts out of the fire?"
"Because," replied Dick quietly, "I'm not going to be the means, if
I can help it of having any man kicked out of this corps when he's
as anxious to be a soldier as I am!"
"You're a ninny, just the same!" Bert decided.
"And you're a hopeless minority here, Dodge, so come along back
to our room," broke in Anstey. "We've some boning of our own to
do before the call sounds for supper formation."
Before the battalion of cadets marched to supper, through the
heavy storm that night, the news of Dick Prescott's inspiration had
traveled pretty firmly through the yearling class.
It is against all West Point traditions to make a hero of a plebe.
Not a word of congratulation came to Cadet Prescott. It wouldn't
even save the young man from being the victim of a lot of hazing
pranks, for these inflictions were deemed necessary to the plebe's
training. None the less, the incident, as it became known, caused
the impression to spread that Cadet Prescott was a good fellow and
that he was likely to prove a credit to the grand old United States
Military Academy.
Hazing a thing of the past at West Point! The War Department and
the authorities at the Military Academy have done all they could,
and will continue to do all in their power to stamp out hazing.
Since the Congressional investigation in the early years of the
present century, much has been done to cut down the rigor of
hazing at West Point. General Mills stamped out much of it with
iron vigor. Colonel Scott dealt many hard blows to the system.
Other officers have bent their energies to the same problems. The
way of the hazer is perilous nowadays. In a word, of late years
hazing has been at a very low level at the United States Military
Academy.
It is, however, a practical impossibility to stamp out hazing wholly
in an institution where hazing has been one of the most cherished
traditions through many generations of cadets.
The hazing of today is milder; there is less of it, and, with rare
exceptions, it is less brutal. Yet hazing, in one form or another,
will doubtless continue at West Point through the twentieth
century as it did through the nineteenth.
The form of hazing has changed, if not the spirit. Sorely pressed by
tac.s, and by other officers stationed at West Point, the yearlings,
or second-year men, who do most of the hazing, have developed
new forms of the ancient sport, and some of these forms may be
carried on in actual sight of an Army officer without exciting his
suspicions.
Where possible, some of the old-style forms of more innocent and
purely mischievous hazing are retained. Where "necessary" new
hazes are employed that are bound to tax the best efforts of
disciplinary or other officers to detect.
Hazing is one of the diversions of men of mature age on the floor
of the New York Stock Exchange. Even in the United States
Senate there are recognized ways of hazing a new Senator who
displays too little reverence for the traditions of that august body.
Then why hope to abolish hazing utterly at West Point?