But sink the plummet a little deeper and these are not our aristocracy nor our ruling class, which is too numerous and too sound of thought and principle for them to feel at home in their company. One boy, however humble his origin, may go to West Point if he can pass the competitive examination. Europe, particularly Germany, would not approve of this; but we think it the best way. The average graduate of the Point, whether the son of a doctor, a lawyer, or a farmer, sticks to the army as his profession. We maintain West Point for the strict business purpose of teaching young men how to train our army in time of peace and to lead and direct it in time of action. Our future officers enter West Point when they are two years younger than is the average at Sandhurst; the course is four years compared with two at Sandhurst. I should venture to say that West Point is the harder grind; that the graduate of the Point has a more specifically academic military training than the graduate of Sandhurst. This is not saying that he may be any better in the performance of the simple duties of a company officer. It is not a new criticism that we train everybody at West Point to be a general, when many of the students may never rise above the command of a battalion. However, it is a significant fact that at the close of the Civil War every army commander was a West Point man and so were most of the corps commanders. The doors are open in the British army for a man to rise from the ranks; not as wide as in our army, but open. The Chief of Staff of the British Expeditionary Force, Sir William Robertson, was in the ranks for ten years. No man not a West Pointer had a position equivalent in importance to his at the close of the Civil War. His rise would have been possible in no other European army. But West Point sets the stamp on the American army and Sandhurst and Woolwich, the engineering and artillery school, on the British army. At the end of four years at West Point the men who survive the hard course may be tried by courtmartial not for conduct unbecoming an officer, but an officer and a gentleman. They are supposed, whatever their origin, to have absorbed certain qualities, if they were not inborn, which are not easily described but which we all recognise in any man. If they are absent it is not the fault of West Point; and if a man cannot acquire them there, then nature never meant them for him. From the time he entered the school the government has paid his way; and he is cared for until he dies, if he keeps step and avoids courtmartials.