examinations for the determination of proficiency, which are now wholly written for the first two years and largely so for the remaining ones.

At these examinations the burden of proof is upon the cadet. The standard of proficiency is sixty six per cent. Should his mark for the term in any subject fall below that percentage of the maximum in that branch, he is ipse facto, deficient, and must justify himself at examination or be discharged. Any form of deception at recitations, besides being practically impossible, is frowned upon by the ethics of the corps. The student stands absolutely upon his merits. Each subject of study has a certain count. The standing of a cadet in each subject is determined by the total of his marks therein, while his count in the subject is obtained by giving the head man its maximum count and each other man a proportional count resulting from his marks. His general standing is determined by the aggregate of his counts in all subjects of study and discipline.

In order that the principle of every man every day may be carried out, the classes are divided into small sections of from ten to fourteen men, having one instructor. The student rises or falls in his class according to his weekly marks by transfer from one section to another. These marks are posted every week and each man has accurate knowledge of his status at all times. Study is in quarters during specified hours, and is varied with gymnastic and military duties.

The corner stone of the course is mathematics, and the bulk of the structure is made up of the exact sciences. The exceptions are the languages-English, French, Spanish,-constitutional, international, and military law, and general history. The primary nature of the preliminary entrance examination has long been a severe handicap to the curriculum, but a recent congress has modified the law regulating it, a law which was enacted at a period when the educational standard of the public school system was primitive and imperfect. Room is needed for some advanced professional studies which are crowded out by the absolute necessity of instruction in elementary subjects which should have been completed in the high schools. The course of study as it now stands, is so ex

acting and extended that it demands under these conditions the utmost energies both of student and instructors. The heads of departments must not only lecture and supervise, but roll up their sleeves and wrestle in the educational arena with the crude and undeveloped intelligences herded into the academic fold from four corners of the union. The strain is very severe and unrelenting, and the writer has seen, during his service of twenty five years, five of his associates break down under it,-all in the prime of their faculties; two forced into premature retirement with shattered health, and three dying in harness after heroic struggles against disease and heart rending affliction. The story of their devoted lives is but little known beyond the scene of their activities; and the members of their scattered households, forced to leave their homes in the majority of cases in straitened circumstances, have only the heritage of honor bequeathed by lives of unpretentious devotion to a high ideal of duty.

It is not competent to so general a paper as this to treat of the details of the military course of instruction. Its purpose is to familiarize the cadet with the duties and needs of a private in the ranks by practical experience; to impress indelibly upon his character the habit of discipline; and to train him to the function of command by its repeated exercise.

Four years of constant drill, practical instruction in military operations, and respectful submission to the will of his superiors makes him a soldier in the true meaning of the word. He may or may not have the talents of a great general, but he has at least the instincts of a soldier and a knowledge of the duties and technical requirements of his profession. He has above all an understanding of the term duty, which makes it the motive power of his professional life and simplifies for him all complex questions of practical ethics. The motto of his alma mater is the philosophy of his life. To do his duty, keep bright his honor, and serve faithfully his country is the hereditary ideal of every son of West Point.

THE SEA AND SEA POWER AS A FACTOR IN THE

HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES.

BY HILARY A. HERBERT.

[Hilary Abner Herbert, ex-secretary of the navy; born Laurensville, S. C., March 12, 1834; educated in the universities of Alabama and Virginia; admitted to the bar and practiced at Greenville, Ala.; captain and colonel of the 8th Alabama volunteers U.S. A.; located in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1872, and resumed law practice; member of congress, 1877-93; secretary of navy, 1893-7.]

In the early part of the seventeenth century the inspired code of Christian ethics was profoundly impressing the human mind throughout all western and southern Europe, the literature of liberty handed down through the dark ages from Greece and Rome was also an active force, and these two forces had nowhere else so successfully coöperated to form free, just and stable government as in the British Isles. It was there that Hampden and Sidney had already lived and died, and it was there that the people had even then made good their claims to the protection of the magna charta, of the petition of right, and the bill of rights. True religious liberty was, however, as yet unknown even in England, and to secure for themselves and their posterity this right and the blessings of self government, the love of which had been instilled into them by English institutions, the early settlers of the American colonies braved, in the little ships of that day, the dark waters of the wide Atlantic. Some of the immigrants came from Holland and other countries by the sea, but it was the English language, English laws, and English ideas that were to dominate in all the thirteen historic colonies.

Fortunately the new comers found here a virgin soil in which to sow the seeds of liberty. No monarchial establishments stood in the way, no ideas of caste and privilege were to be eradicated. The wide Atlantic had kept the soil intact until man was ready to plant in it free institutions.

The settlers of the colonies set themselves down close to the sea and to the rivers that ran into the sea. It was the sea and the rivers that ran into it that were to furnish them means of transportation and intercommunication, and it was the

three thousand miles of ocean, separating them from the home government to which they owed allegiance, that rendered it impracticable for that government to dominate them completely. It was the wide expanse of sea, therefore, to which the American colonists were largely indebted for the measure of self government they enjoyed even when not yet ready to assert their complete independence.

When the war of the Revolution began, the geographical position of the colonies, all lying along or near the shores of the Atlantic, was in a military point of view especially disadvantageous. Their coast stretched over 1883 statute miles, and all along this entire line their indisputable possession of the sea enabled the British to select bases from which to sever communication between the widely separated armies of the colonists.

The colonists did not surrender the seas without a struggle; they were naturally a seafaring people and made many gallant fights upon the ocean. In October, 1776, the colonial government had, building and built, twenty six war vessels, though many of these never got to sea. Several of the colonies had built vessels of their own, and such was the activity of the American cruisers that they were said to have captured altogether in 1776 as many as three hundred and twenty sail. Many supplies and munitions of war that were to be useful in the long struggle to follow fell into their hands. In 1778 the American cruisers captured and destroyed four hundred and sixty seven sail of merchantmen, and throughout the war such was the courage and enterprise of the American sailors that British shipping was always more or less in danger. In 1779 Paul Jones made his celebrated cruise in the Bon Homme Richard and captured the Serapis in one of the most remarkable battles in the history of naval warfare.

But the little fleets of the Americans were eventually swept from the seas. Their successes whenever achieved served to inspire hope in the patriot armies, but the enemy was never seriously crippled by anything the colonists could do at seahe was only exasperated. Arnold's gallant struggle for the control of Lake Champlain promised results that were really strategically important, but his efforts only ended in defeat,

and Lake Champlain and Lake George were left in the hands of the British. The Americans soon had of their own resources nothing to rely on but their land forces. Communication between these was over such extended lines, and marches of armies and transportation of supplies over the bad roads, which though inferior, connected the colonies together, were so difficult, that the cause of independence was plainly hopeless without the aid of some naval force.

The British at different times established on the Penobscot, Newport, at Gardner's bay, in the Chesapeake, at Charleston and Savannah, bases from which they could carry on offensive operations, and quite often it happened that they were able by aid of their ships to relieve their troops from distress. In the very outset of the war, the British army at Boston, besieged on Dorchester Heights, must have surrendered but for the fleet which came to its assistance and carried it away to Halifax. That same year a fleet seized New York and the British held it during the whole war as a permanent base, thus interposing between the American forces operating in New England and those in the south and west.

It was fortunate for the cause of independence that steam was not being used in those days as a propelling power of vessels. Clinton with a fleet of swift and sure steam warships and transports might have sent an expedition promptly to the relief of Burgoyne, who had cut loose from his base on Lake Champlain, and that general need not have surrendered at Saratoga. So also if the British fleets had been propelled by steam they could have promptly forced their way up the Delaware, and Philadelphia must have fallen long before it did. As it was, the capital city of the new government when it did fall was captured by an expedition escorted by naval vessels up the Chesapeake and landed at Elkton, on the Elk river near by. The city thus captured by the sea power of Great Britain was relieved by the sea power of France; it was evacuated, and the British troops were transported down the Delaware to New York for fear the mouth of the river should be blockaded by the French.

Nowhere during the long continuous struggle was the effect of the failure or success of British naval operations more appar