This did not imply any relaxation of that severe régime in which theoretically only the fittest were to survive. The cadets might not smoke cigarettes or drink; they might not go skylarking to neighboring towns. Their every hour of drill, study, and recreation was counted. Far from the freedom of the elective course, every mind and body was filled into a mold a century old. Three-fourths of the study was scholastic; only a fourth, outside the drill, could be classed as strictly military: for the cadets were supposed to receive the equivalent of a collegiate education at the same time that they were being trained to be officers. With few exceptions their instructors were former graduates, called in from service with the army. Some of these might be rusty, compared to the experts of civil colleges, who gave their lives to specializing in one branch; but civilian teachers could not supply military discipline and atmosphere. The boy who went to West Point was an average boy. At an impressionable age he entered a world as isolated and self-centered as that of a monastery. The effects of college and fraternity spirit were many times intensified. He had almost no opportunities of renewing the associations of civil life; all was of the army, for the army, and by the army. Though he served in the ranks as a cadet, he never served in the ranks as a soldier. His "How little they know!" was not to suffer the shock of competitive strife with the millions of other boys whom he was to lead as a general. His quality of leadership had been tested only in marks on drill and scholarship. When he was graduated, he became an officer, his position assured for life. The fellows of his school days who went into professions had to have their way paid, or to work their way, through college and professional school, and then slowly build up a practice. All this the West Pointer had free, as the gift of his country, in the name of democracy. His income would be more than equal to that of the average graduate of our leading law and medical schools, with the certainty of sufficient pay to care for his old age when he was retired. Once an officer, he could lean back on his oars if he chose,--the hardest work of his career having been finished when other boys are beginning theirs. He became a cleat on the slow-moving escalator of promotion, waiting on the death and retirement of seniors or the expansion of the army. There were other cleats than those with the West Point marking, those of officers who had worked their way up from the ranks, and a larger class which had come in through examination; but the West Point spirit was dominant. The West Pointer was a West Pointer; his tradition the tradition of the army.