In this connection it may be said that the Indianapolis public schools owe their marked excellence and efficiency to their complete divorcement from political influence. This has not only assured the public an intelligent and honest expenditure of school funds, but it has created a corps spirit among the city’s teachers, admirable in itself, and tending to cumulative benefits not yet realized. The superintendent of schools has absolute power of appointment, and he is accountable only to the commissioners, and they in turn are entirely independent of the mayor and other city officers. Positions on the school board are not sought by politicians. The incumbents serve without pay, and the public evince a disposition to find good men and to keep them in office. The soldiers’ monument at Indianapolis is a testimony to the deep impression made by the Civil War on the people of the State. The monument is to Indianapolis what the Washington Monument is to the national capital. The incoming traveler beholds it afar, and within the city it is almost an inescapable thing, though with the advent of the sky-scraper it is rapidly losing its fine dignity as the chief incident of the skyline. It stands in a circular plaza that was originally a park known as the “Governor’s Circle.” This was long ago abandoned as a site for the governor’s mansion, but it offered an ideal spot for a monument to Indiana soldiers, when, in 1887, the General Assembly authorized its construction. The height of the monument from the street level is two hundred and eighty-four feet and it stands on a stone terrace one hundred and ten feet in diameter. The shaft is crowned by a statue of Victory thirty-eight feet high. It is built throughout of Indiana limestone. The fountains at the base, the heroic sculptured groups “War” and “Peace,” and the bronze astragals representing the army and navy, are admirable in design and execution. The whole effect is one of poetic beauty and power. There is nothing cheap, tawdry, or commonplace in this magnificent tribute of Indiana to her soldiers. The monument is a memorial of the soldiers of all the wars in which Indiana has participated. The veterans of the Civil War protested against this, and the controversy was long and bitter; but the capture of Vincennes from the British in 1779 is made to link Indiana to the war of the Revolution; and the battle of Tippecanoe, to the war of 1812. The war with Mexico, and seven thousand four hundred men enlisted for the Spanish War are likewise remembered. It is, however, the war of the Rebellion, whose effect on the social and political life of Indiana was so tremendous, that gives the monument its great cause for being. The white male population of Indiana in 1860 was 693,348; the total enlistment of soldiers during the ensuing years of war was 210,497! The names of these men lie safe for posterity in the base of the gray shaft.