elements handled and by practical experience in handling these elements. I call the result of this combination of knowledge and practice organized experience. An important and often preponderating element entering into the correct solution of a problem is the personality of the actor. A person with self-control, of a courageous spirit, and with a capacity for considering problems from an impersonal and detached point of view has the making of a valuable man, when he has mastered a subject and acquired organized experience in handling its details. It is the purpose of West Point to develop this sort of power.

The Military Academy expects her sons to become soldiers, and attempts an education which imparts knowledge of the art of war, and as far as possible offers practical opportunities for organizing this knowledge and making it experience. This is apparent to a casual visitor. As a part of the curriculum, however, there is an unseen process of character-building. It is sometimes called the "Spirit of Old West Point working in the cadets." Whatever called, it is the educating of the students in conformity to certain standards.

The correct performance of a military duty is characterized by self-control, a determined spirit, and a detached point of view which place the success of a cause above personal considerations. West Point attempts this kind of education.

Power of this sort is essential for success in any active calling. Vocations other than the military stand in equal need of it, but its absence is not so apparent, because failure in business or professional life is not so far reaching as in war.

In most colleges the curriculum stores memory with interesting and helpful nuggets of information, and the students follow trails that lead to an understanding of various subjects, but the race usually stops short of the goal of a complete knowledge of any one subject. The mental pabulum is a hash-a superficial seasoning of everything and depth in nothing. West Point is not so discursive in its effort for general culture as most colleges. In one subject it tries to reach the bedrock of knowledge. The cadets are taught discipline. It stays with them through every hour of every day for four years. Every period is full of its problems. The year is three hundred and sixty-five days of subordination. They learn the necessity of discipline, what it is, why and how it is taught, and are grounded in the universal faith of soldiers, that without it military success is impossible.

The A B C's of self-control are taught in physical exercises, the purpose of which is to make the body an efficient machine and subordinate. By repetition the lower nerve centers and the muscles are educated until correct performances become

habits.

The subordination of the will is largely a matter of imitation and pressure. First comes submission to orders in the daily requirements of academic life, and later subordination to standards for the purposes of a larger life. The pleb finds patterns in the upper classmen. He is told to imitate their behavior. If he refuses, the consequences are sufficiently serious to modify his attitude. The weight of public opinion is always upon the side of conformity. He submits and goes through the mill of doing things in a soldierly way, until his physical make-up is a bunch of correct habits which carry him through his daily routine with the minimum of demerits. So far he learns to do what he is told, to look like a soldier and act like one in the little world at West Point. Physical training is not elective. In In every form of team contest the cadet learns something practical of loyalty and service to his group. This is not peculiar to West Point. There is at the Academy, however, a great historical background, and its daily life is in a setting charged with suggestions of men whose supreme purpose in life was to render service. The spirit of such men lives in the memory of their work. Unconsciously the suggestion of loyalty and service in noble lives has a powerful formative influence upon plastic youth. There is in the atmosphere a reverence

for soldierly greatness. Military history, as taught, is full of examples of men who failed, because they lacked subordination, courage, or capacity to throw themselves into a cause with the abandon that disregards personal consequences. Gradually it dawns upon cadets that their power of efficient self-expression as officers depends upon a right kind of thinking and feeling about themselves which furnishes the imperative push behind action. This unseen source of strength becomes interesting and absorbing. The personalities of great men are studied for correct emotional tones. As the plebs keep step with the older cadets, so upper classmen begin to keep step with great captains. Imperceptibly ideals grow and take possession of the mind. In a composite picture of these ideals, there is always the image of physical and mental control, and the courageous spirit fighting for what it believes right to the limit of endurance-Honor, Country, and Duty are facts luminously clear. The cadets learn to know and value the spirit of service and subordinate themselves to its demands. In many ways the academic life puts cadets in the way of recognizing and copying greatness. The Academy does what Phillips Brooks once recommended in a talk, the subject of which was Washington: "Cultivate reverence for Greatness. Teach it to your children. Cultivate perception of it. The double

blessing of pattern and power.

A man's whole range of mental life is involved in being a soldier and no part can act alone. Discipline must be defined, in terms of the whole man, as the acquisition and organization of soldierly thoughts, feelings, and methods of conduct.

The elements in the process will be most clear to us if we consider such a recognized course of military training as that given at the United States Military Academy. There are three steps in the process as there illustrated.

First-a standard is set before the cadets. There is gradually developed in them, according to their power of absorption, an idea of what the well-rounded military character should be-not only how he should look and carry himself physically, but how he should think, feel, and act under all situations. This imparting of knowledge of standards is primarily an intellectual process.

Second-this step has to do with the valuation of standards. The task is to develop the selfrespect of the cadet, in such a way that he will acquire a master sentiment to conform and mould his life to the accepted standards. The military virtues and acts which make for efficiency in war must appeal to him as supreme models of perfection which dominate and fill him with the hope and faith of a personal growth. As the intellect is involved in acquiring ideas of the standards so