Jasper County Democrat, Volume 4, Number 33, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 November 1901 — A West Point Critic. [ARTICLE]

A West Point Critic.

Major Charles E. Woodruff of the medical department of the army, on duty at Fort Riley, Kansas, says that it ought to be reasonable to expect that a large proportion of West Pointers would become famous, or that at least some of .them would become successful in life. “The fact is the , very reverse occurs,” he says, “for it seems as though the best way to extinguish a man is to send him to West Point.” In the course of a paper which he has written on the subject he makes some interesting and original observations, among others that absolute discipline kills aggressive initiative; that scholarship is too often mistaken for ability; that the most successful military leaders have been noted for their ignorance of general topics and hatred of books, and that these same great military leaders are, as a rule, undisciplined and insubordinate in the lower grades. He says his object in presenting these facts is to show that the young xnan who graduates from West Point is a nervous wreck, and that he goes to his duties as a commissioned second lieutenant in a state of collapse, worn out by hard work, ceaseless drills and pestered by the exactions of his military instructors, too often stunted into a uniformed mimic bearing a military title.—Leslie’s Weekly.