THE NE}y WEST POINT 



35 



Such having been the case, it would not jjerhaps have been unnat- 

 ural if the veterans of the civil war had been rather disposed to mag- 

 nify their own opportunities, even possibly to the extent of discrediting 

 the advantages of West Point training. This, however, has not been 

 the case; the most successful of leaders who had come up 'from the 

 ranks' have united in deploring for themselves the lack of certain 

 elements, hardly to be described and to be gained only in early youth, 

 and to advocate most strenuously the training that the academy 

 affords. 



This influence, which has been quite unanimous, combined with the 

 popular feeling consequent upon our sudden rise as a 'world-power,' 

 has determined congress to increase largely the capacity of West Point, 

 and to remodel wholly the material of the institution. For this pur- 



The Chapel. 



pose the sum of five million dollars has been appropriated, and, after a 

 competition between ten prominent firms of architects, the award of 

 excellence in general design has been made to Cram, Goodhue and 

 Ferguson, of Boston. 



The work of remodeling the academy is necessarily tri-f old : it 

 naturally resolves itself into the architectural, the pictorial, and, inevi- 

 tably, the practical. At present the buildings of the academy, con- 

 structed as they have been at various periods and by authority of men 

 of various degrees of artistic feeling, are more or less ill-assorted and 

 incongruous; several are fine examples of architecture; the cadet 

 barracks liighly appropriate in treatment, and the cadet mess-hall 



