the feelings are involved in this valuation of standards.

Third-this step involves the effort, with its strivings, its victories, and defeats, to make habitual the acts which the standards demand and which the feelings impel.

During his four years the cadet is given the most favorable environment possible the environment in which the standards would naturally live; and is encouraged to think, feel, and act as a soldier should. His mental and physical life is so organized that the desire to attain the military ideal gains the force of a controlling passion and dominates conduct. I do not think this process attains full development in four short years. The cadets are probably still cubs at graduation, but they are lion cubs. As officers the growth should continue. Each has been put in the way of attaining, according to his light, an intellectual grasp on some image of perfection; and, if his feelings rise to the plane of making the attainment of that ideal a master sentiment, and if, by repeated conflicts and victories over other impulses, this master sentiment establishes an habitual dominion over other motives, a time comes when conflict ceases and the master sentiment operates automatically, as the sole controller and regulator of conduct. I analyze this process under three heads

1. Knowledge of the standards.

2. Interest in the standards, and the growth of a desire to make them personal ideals.

3. Practice, or the struggle through which the standards are assimilated and made one's own.

These various phases of the process do not necessarily follow in orderly succession. In the prevailing order of military instruction the natural order is worked backwards. Education begins by furnishing certain models for imitation and imposing these standards upon the recruit. Kipling has described this method of hammering:

"The young recruit is 'aughty-'e draf's from Gawd knows where;

They bid him show 'is stockin's an' lay 'is mattress square;

'E calls it bloomin' nonsense-'e doesn't know no

more

An' then up comes 'is Company an' kicks 'im round the floor;

"The young recruit is 'ammered-'e takes it very

'ard;

'E hangs 'is 'ead an' mutters-'e sulks about the

yard;

'E talks o' cruel tyrants which 'e'll swing for by

an' bye,

An' the others 'ears an' mocks 'im, an' the boy goes off to cry.

"The young recruit is silly-'e thinks o' suicide; 'E's lost 'is gutter-devil; 'e 'asn't got 'is pride; But day by day they kick 'im which 'elps 'im on a bit,

Till 'e finds 'isself one mornin' with a full and proper kit.

"The young recruit is 'appy-'e throws a chest to

suit;

You see 'im grow mustaches; you 'ear 'im slap 'is

boot;

'E learns to drop the Bloodies from every word he

slings,

An' 'e shows a 'ealthy brisket when 'e strips for bars an' rings."

In the end, the recruit gets the right ideas and feelings about a soldier; but the process is wasteful. Why not give him some conception of what his training means in the first place? If he knows what he is about, he may desire the "'ealthy brisket;" look forward to it, and work more heartily for it on that account.

Here we do not mean to go at the method of discipline backwards. It is the object of this School to enlarge your conceptions of a soldier, to fill you with notions of service and duty, which will fit in with and become a part of your original ideas. It is the purpose to surround you with

living thoughts to be absorbed and made your own, so that in the hereafter, when called to exercise the vocation of an officer, your outlook will see something more in a soldier than a man with a gun.

Such a combination will appeal to you as a masquerading caricature, unless behind it there is the spirit of obedience, loyalty, and devotion, and the training which makes these efficient.

III

WE

KNOWLEDGE AND IDEAS

E spoke of the first phase in the organization of military character as knowledge of standards. It is difficult for a thinking being to play a part without having some notion about how he should think and feel to sustain the character he assumes. All soldiers have some idea of the type they think they represent and make the type a standard up to which they play. Some years ago I had an interesting talk with an old soldier who had served in the Rebellion, and who had been a high ranking officer in the militia for many years before the war. Speaking of his earlier experiences he said, "The Boston companies counted it a fine military stunt to march up State Street in a private uniform behind a brass band, with one hundred muskets." When Kossuth visited Boston we had a parade in his honor. The streets were filled with brass bands, tall bearskin hats, and white cross belts. No two companies dressed alike. Kossuth made a speech in which he said he had "never seen anything like it in