UNITED STATES MILITARY ACADEMY AT WEST POINT. 
593 
investigate the working of the different departments of the Academy. 
The officers of the staff, connected with these departments, appear 
before the Sub-Committees and give evidence at great length, stating 
freely what they consider to be their chief wants or defects. These 
statements are put into writing by the officers in letter form and are 
published verbatim in the Proceedings of the Board. It strikes one 
as rather curious that such prominence should be given to the opinions 
of subordinate officers, and the freedom with which they occasionally 
criticise the Government is calculated to produce a sensation of surprise 
in the mind of the English military reader. The Proceedings of the 
Board of Visitors, together with those of the Sub-Committees, and the 
numerous reports of the officers just alluded to, are published in the 
form of a book of some 116 pages, entitled the “ Report of the Board 
of Visitors to the United States Military Academy made to the Secretary 
of War,” it is somewhat verbose, and is full of repetition, nevertheless 
it contains much interesting reading, and is supplemented with very 
good maps, views, plans, and drawings. 
Conclusions. 
The West Point course is the most scientific training of the United 
States, analagous to the Ecole Poly technique in Paris, and yet the 
requirements of admission are of the most elementary character, and 
do not amount to those required to enter an ordinary high school; 
hence the undesirable result that the extraordinary number of 50 per 
cent, of the cadets fail to graduate. At Woolwich if a candidate passes 
into the Academy the odds are, barring sickness and misconduct, about 
20 to 1 on his passing out, but at West Point the chances are only 
even. It may be safely concluded that the great number of failures at 
the latter is due to the want of an open competitive entrance examin¬ 
ation of a high standard. This is partly demonstrated by statistics, 
which show that a much larger proportion graduate of cadets who have 
undergone a local competitive examination prior to admission, than 
those who have joined on nomination direct. The figures are 63 to 37. 
No precise reason can be given here why open competition is not 
instituted, but it may be observed that the supply of cadets for West 
Point is less than the demand, and if the conditions of entrance were 
made more difficult, the supply would probably be still further 
diminished. A second reason might be that the American nation has 
not yet arrived at the stage of implicit confidence in the integrity of a 
public competitive examination. The question now arises, how do the 
other 50 per cent, of the cadets get through the West Point course ? 
Some of them doubless may be young savants by intuition, but so far as 
is known, their intellectual stock-in-trade on joining the Academy 
consists of the three IPs and a little History and Geography. How 
then at the end of four years do we find them past masters of mixed 
Mathematics, Philosophy, Physics, and many other branches of know¬ 
ledge of a high order ? The successful achievements of these cadets are 
probably due to good teaching falling upon “ good ground,” i.e. “ indus¬ 
trious intelligence.” The theoretical instruction, as now imparted at the 
United States Military Academy, is the result of years of experience 
