In the immense army that will soon be ours, the graduates of West Point will indeed be a small leaven, but I am confident they will bring to this mass of raw soldier material the ideals and the spirit of their Alma Mater. They will not forget the lessons learned at her knee, but will justify to the nation that has given them their education the soundness of West Point’s methods of training officers.
For days and days groups of Army Service Corps men going around the Post clipping the trees, mowing the grass on the Plain, and daubing with black paint the cannon on Trophy Point have been heralding the approach of June. The odors of the fresh grass and of the tar in the gutters are exhilarating smells for every cadet in the Corps. There are buoyancy and hope in their manner and a decided note of anticipation in the air. This feeling of anticipation is the greatest charm of a cadet’s life. It really begins with the candidate before he enters the Academy. He anticipates his entrance; then as a plebe, he looks forward with even greater pleasure to the day of his “recognition” when he shall become an upper-classman. Words are too weak to express the eagerness with which, as a Yearling, he sees the spring slip by and June arrive bringing with it his long desired furlough. And then he has before his eyes the seeming El Dorado of graduation.
Our plebe, Mr. Ducrot, is especially on the _qui vive_ for the passage of the days. Ever since the snow left the Plain and the surrounding hills, and the first little blades of grass began to peep through the boggy spring earth, his attitude toward life has somehow seemed different. For the past ten months he has led the life of an obscure being, like the silk worm in his cocoon spinning his silk. He has almost completed his work of the plebe year and is about to emerge from his shell. For a few weeks he is seized with the languor of spring. The drills while not irksome seem unduly long; the lessons harder to prepare. But as the days of May fly by he feels his wings growing stronger and stronger and the spring fever is forgotten in the anticipation of being a Yearling.
At last the first of June arrives! At reveille even, everyone is happy. He tries his best to answer about a dozen upper-classmen who ask him all at once, “Mr. Ducrot, how many days until June?”