Upon graduation from West Point, I dare say that there is no more highminded, well-trained, and efficient body of young men in the world. The graduates join their commands brimming over with youth, intelligence, enthusiasm, and energy and ruled by intense loyalty. They want to do what is right. They want to go forward in their profession. They make every effort to perform well their duties. All that they need are leaders among their superiors who will develop their aspirations. Sometimes they encounter a distinct air of hostility, occasionally a petty attitude on the part of some older officers whose one ambition is to “put them in their place,” and, too frequently, simply indifference. The result is that the young officers quickly become a prey to the red tape, the dull routine, the narrowness of post life, or to the mental inertia of prolonged duty upon the border where almost every stimulating influence is absent. If only there were enough good leaders to take this wonderful material that the Academy sends forth annually and develop it, there is no telling to what heights these young officers would rise. But to return to our plebe who makes his début in Academic work September the first. The evening before has been spent in earnest preparation for the lesson in mathematics, and he sets forth on this early autumn day to grapple with the hardest study of his course. First call for recitation is sounded at seven minutes before eight o’clock. The trumpeter, an enlisted man of the Army, blows “school call” first in the area of barracks, then outside of the north sally-port, on the Plain side of the buildings. The call is repeated several times, and as its notes float out on the air, the barracks begin to disgorge the cadets, sometimes singly, but more often in groups of twos and threes. The more prompt ones pile out on the cement walk, standing near their places in the ranks to await the assembly. The majority are laughing and talking or discussing the lesson, while others, thirsting for knowledge until the last, keep their noses in their books. Their comrades sometimes tease them, calling them “tenth-boners” in good-natured derision, or steal up behind them and shut their books for them saying, “Oh, come off spec-ing tenths,” which means to desist from studying at the last moments to better the mark. At one minute before assembly the cadet officer of the day, a straight young man in a red sash and red crossbelt (bound up, as Patsy O’Hara of 1904 wittily remarked, in his official red tape), takes his post in the center of the area and commands: “Form your sections!”