"It may be, but it may not be: the transition to the other kind of life is too sudden, too quick. Twenty-four hours after one has left this college one is an ensign, and then all at once he enjoys that complete liberty against which he was so zealously guarded but a short time ago. One can eat and drink what one likes, one can go where one will, in short, one can enjoy all the pleasures of life at one go off. And so one easily oversteps the limits and does all sorts of stupid things in the joy of having escaped such strict surveillance. And who can blame an ensign for this? The young ensign gets accustomed to leading an idle life, and this continues when he becomes a lieutenant, only very few having the energy to alter. We were lately looking over the Army List to see how many of our contemporaries at college were still in the army, and we were simply astonished to find how many had vanished. The education at the Cadets' College is answerable for this--that alone. At nineteen a man is an officer, at three-and-twenty he gets his discharge; that happens more often than people believe, and that shows clearly that the cadets at college have not learnt the one thing properly that they ought to have learnt--to control themselves and to live as officers in a suitable manner. At college far too much stress is laid upon drill, exercise, lessons and other things, and not nearly enough on the education of the youthful mind. There is no education of the individual, of the character; it's all done _en bloc_, and the college can never take the place of the home; what the child sees and hears and learns unconsciously there, is worth a thousand times more than what is so stringently imparted to him at college." "But how can it be altered?" asked the major, who was deeply interested in the conversation. The ladies, meanwhile, had risen from the table and taken their needlework.