West Point

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III THE REALIZATION OF AN ARCHITECT'S DREAM WHEN the springtime rolls around and the Hudson River is at its best, the annual influx of visitors begins to arrive at West Point. Trains and boats disgorge official visitors, tourists, boy scouts, delegations of various brotherhoods and sisterhoods, and...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III THE REALIZATION OF AN ARCHITECT'S DREAM WHEN the springtime rolls around and the Hudson River is at its best, the annual influx of visitors begins to arrive at West Point. Trains and boats disgorge official visitors, tourists, boy scouts, delegations of various brotherhoods and sisterhoods, and picknickers galore. Little groups of them appear in all corners of the Post, in the area of Barracks, on the Plain, in the Public Buildings, and along the famous Flirtation Walk. Their chief interest, of course, is to catch a glimpse of the cadets, either en masse or individually. When the Corps starts either to meals or to dress parade, they gather along the sidewalks, or at the visitors' seats to watch the marching. Some openly express their enthusiasm and pleasure, genuinely delighted at everything they see, while others remain silent and phlegmatic apparently taking only a languid interest in their surroundings. As I watch my fellow-countrymen strolling about the grounds of the Academy, I often wonder what are their impressions of this institution. To many, of course, the historic traditions ofWest Point, as well as its functions and purposes, are thoroughly familiar, but to a vast majority West Point is a closed book. They see the cadets, the drills, the buildings, perhaps parade, but they never have an opportunity to acquaint themselves with the intimate life of the Academy. They do not derive the full benefit from their visit, because they are in the position of regarding the institution from the outside. In many cases, the spirit of investigation is restrained by a feeling of timidity upon their part, a feeling of awe in the face of military surroundings. The Army is so little known to the people in the United States, that, to the average civilian, there seem...