Superb of health, and hardened of physique, the graduate, I should add, need not continue the West Point régime after his graduation. He might neglect exercise to the point that led President Roosevelt to issue his order compelling tests of physical endurance, which led to such an uproar in army circles. Roosevelt proceeded on the sound principle that capacity for enormous and sudden physical strain is a prime requisite--as the Great War so abundantly proved--for leading infantry on marches and in battle, and for sleeping on the ground. Occasionally a West Pointer may have had some of his illusions about "they" amended by his colonel; but anything like a full revelation was out of the question. The young lieutenant, when he went to an army post at home or in the Philippines, found himself in the same isolated world of army thought and associations. The troops he commanded hardly put him in touch with the average of citizens. They were men who, in a country which did not feel the call to military service, enlisted for $17.50 a month and the security of army life, oftener than for adventure or ambition. Between them and their officers there was as broad a gulf as between any officer class in Europe and their soldiers. All standards were set on the time required to drill these recruits and form them in the regular army mould. When officers met, ten or twenty years after graduation or receiving their commissions, they found none of the changes of fortune which alumni of civil colleges found. Everyone was in the same relative rank as when he became a second lieutenant. The army opposed promotion by selection, as that meant "political" influence and favoritism. Promotion by selection was against the law, except that the President might, if he chose, make a second lieutenant a brigadier or major-general with the consent of the Senate. The promotion of Wood, Bell, Funston, and Pershing to be brigadiers over the heads of many seniors led to no end of ill-feeling in the army, which made these ambitious and able officers the victims of an unpopularity which only time and the retirement of older officers could overcome.