For many years the Military Academy was what its name implies, an Academy, but it has expanded from time to time until it is a military university, giving instruction for all branches of the service except the Medical Corps, and securing for each graduate a broad foundation which enables him to specialize in any direction by means of the various special schools for each branch. The glory of West Point, however, is in the West Point character, now well known in every civilized country in the world, with its reputation for fidelity, efficiency, discipline, and general uprightness. The standing army of the United States has always been too small for the tasks that have been laid upon it, and at every crisis it has had to train large forces of citizen soldiers summoned from civil life for the emergency. These citizen-soldiers, as well as the Regular Army itself, rely upon the scientific education and high character of the West Point graduate to keep the art of war abreast, if not a little ahead, of the times, and for the initiative and informing leaven to permeate the mass and to cause the firm progress of discipline and uprightness throughout the whole. Shortly after the Mexican War a verse was added to the old West Point song of Benny Havens: “Their [graduates] blood has watered western plains And northern wilds of snow, Has dyed deep red the Everglades, And walls of Mexico.” Since that time they have shed it copiously in Cuba, China, and the Philippines, and they are now about to take their places with comrades from civil life fighting for liberty and democracy on the battlefields of France. HUGH L. SCOTT. WASHINGTON, D. C., _May, 1917_. PREFACE This book is intended to give, aside from a brief historical sketch of West Point, something of the feelings of the cadet from the moment that he reports for duty until he graduates four years later. Perhaps some of my fellow West Pointers will disagree with me in regard to my interpretation of their feelings, but what I have written thereon is drawn from my own experience and from many conversations with cadets of to-day. The customs, traditions, methods of training of the Academy are, I believe, unique, and they make an unforgettable impression upon the cadet. Especially does he become imbued with an almost indefinable influence that we of the Academy call the Spirit of West Point, and in the pages that follow I have tried to seize and translate into words this spirit of the institution. I have greatly enjoyed writing these pages about West Point, a subject very dear to my heart, and I offer this book to the public in the hope that my fellow countrymen may become better acquainted with the aims and ideals of their National Military Academy.