SOMETHING FROM WEST POINT

The annual report of the Superintendent of the United States Military Academy has prompted an interesting editorial in the "Providence Journal". It seems that West Point is seeking to learn from civilian institutions, thus raising the question of what those institutions may learn from West Point. According to the "Journal" a Harvard professor (one of the Academy's teaching force) found at West Point a unique example of democracy. The men there come from every section and every class in the country; they do everything in common, eat together, study the same subjects, go through the identical daily routine, have the same interest and activities, even wear the same clothes. Surely a perfect democracy-no one has the slightest advantage over anyone else. It is "democracy efficient".

All this is very fine and the superiority of the system, as the "Journal" suggests, is unquestioned,-if it is not forgotten that West Point is educating army officers. However much the Harvard professor may have been impressed by this democracy, the fact remains that it is of very little interest to civilian institutions. In the first place the colleges are educating men for civil life where democracy does not consist in eating, the name food, wearing the same clothes, and doing things in common. Secondly, if individuality is really worth while, as at Harvard for instance, then democracy as pictured at West Point is not worth consideration. The hint that Harvard could gain in this way is absurd.

But that the University can learn nothing from the Academy is equality absurd. The mere fact that it is an institution of the highest rank with entirely different aims is basis enough for advocating an exchange of ideas. By ending professors, who are officers in the Reserves and thus eligible for West Point's teaching staff, and receiving men from the military faculty, or by some other feasible plan, Harvard might benefit to no small degree from West Point's educational methods-something it never can do as long as the Utopian democracy idea persists.