WEST POINT, THE ARMY, AND THE MILITIA.
THE Board of Visitors to the National Military Academy in 1883 told all that they had learned about the school, or cared to say about it, in two printed pages: they were impressed with the perfection and beauty of everything, and had nothing to suggest.
The report of the Board of 1884 contains some thirty pages, including the oration which one of the Visitors delivered to the cadets and which the other eleven Visitors voted to make a part of their report. This Board mustered up courage enough to make a few suggestions, albeit with great diffidence, as they confess. They recommended increasing the size of the band and teaching more Spanish. Some committees were more radical in their suggestions, but the Board, as a whole, could not go beyond the recommendations in favor of more Spanish teaching and a brass band of forty pieces. As a whole, the Board viewed the horsemanship of the cadets with astonishment, and of the training and development at the Academy they were satisfied "that there is nothing in all the civic colleges and universities at all equal to it." In fact, the Visitors, petrified at the accomplishments of the cadets, observe, "It may by some be questioned whether or not it is necessary, in order that a young man may become a good officer, that he should know as much or be able to do as much as he is made to do and is taught at West Point."
The Visitors of the next two years went to work with an evident purpose to find out whether the Military Academy were really abreast of the times, and, if not, wherein it could be improved. But in reading their painstaking reports two or three things must be borne in mind. No Board of Visitors present at an educational establishment merely during the examinations can get much information about it. It is certain that no virtue that the school possesses will be permitted to escape their attention, and it is equally certain that any fault that they discover must be too large and obtrusive to be covered up by the faculty even for a few days. The Military Academy and its graduates do not come into competition with the civic colleges and their graduates, and it is almost impossible to find any means of comparison to assist one in getting at the relative value of the methods employed at West Point.
Then there are features peculiar to the Military Academy that must be borne in mind. It is a professional school, designed to train youths
