The time of the officer is well employed while on duty at the Academy. In those departments whose period of recitation is an hour and a half, he has two sections daily, but if the period is one hour, he instructs three sections. He averages, therefore, from fifteen to eighteen hours of actual teaching per week. To this amount must be added the conferences of the instructors, conducted either by the Professor or one of his assistants. These conferences are held, usually daily, and vary from one to two hours and cover the material in the lesson or in advance work. By means of these conferences, the Professor is able to standardize the teaching without restricting the personality or individuality of his officers. The routine work, that is, the keeping of records, weekly reports, the correcting of exercises, problems, and compositions, all demand a greater or less amount of time, and then what is most important, the instructor must spend many hours in preparation. I have known many instructors to work every night until midnight after the routine work of the day. In the demand upon an officer’s time, consideration is given the fact that with him teaching is an incident in his career, and he must therefore have at his disposal, whether he uses it or not, at least a couple of hours per day for professional work and study. When absent from troops an officer becomes more or less rusty upon the duties of his arm, and he should, consequently, by reading, the solution of problems, writing or what not, keep up with the progress made in his branch of the Service. General Orders of the Army prescribe also that at least one hour per day must be employed in bodily exercise, riding, walking, tennis, golf, swimming, polo, etc., and the officer is required to submit a certificate stating that he has taken the prescribed amount. I give in somewhat tedious detail the employment of the officer’s time, because so frequently I hear, expressed by the layman, the opinion that officers of the Army have practically nothing to do. It is ordinarily difficult to disabuse their mind of this idea, chiefly because it is already made up. A visitor arrives at West Point to spend the day and seeing a few officers playing golf in the morning he assumes that _all_ officers have nothing to do. He perhaps little realizes that the same golfers, or tennis players, are trying to get their exercise at a time that will not interfere with their academic duties that begin for each department at varying hours. That same officer, who plays a game of golf at 9:30 A.M., will in all probability spend a part of the forenoon and afternoon with the cadets, and all evening in preparation. Appearances are often very deceptive. This is particularly true in the Army, which has been, until the war came upon us, subject to more unjust criticism than any other professional body.