It may be because we are growing old that we compare the old days with the present with unfavorable comment on the present, or it may be that we really observe shortcomings in present-day methods.
At the noon hour to-day I entered the room of my Naval Academy classmate B— who had remained in the service all these years, while I had spent almost 30 of them in civil life. I entered all smiles and said: “ I have been visiting outside your door with Billy Caperton, isn’t he a joy? Always the courteous, agreeable, pleasant gentleman, it makes you feel good all over to meet him.” He answered, “ Do you remember Caperton, Vinton and Stoney that first summer? ” And then we were off into reminiscences of the old days and comparisons with the new that took up the whole lunch hour, and our talk, like many other talks of the old U. S. Naval Academy graduates of 40 years ago, was about the following :
That first day after we had taken the oath we were lined up on the deck of the old Santee, a motley crowd in our “cits,” fair representatives of all sections. Kellogg of Rhode Island, Sloan of New York (eastern sophisticated city “men”), Marsh from Muncie, and Blish, Seymour, Indiana, Bonfits from a country town in Missouri, big Jim Drake from the corn-fields of Arkansas, “ Bird ” Wilkinson from a Louisiana plantation and Nat Saunders from the cotton-fields of Texas, but all Americans. Captain Merrill Miller addressed us as to our new positions and said about this: “Yesterday you were boys, to-day you are officers and gentlemen. You will be treated as such and expected to behave as such.” How our blood tingled and our backbones stiffened up. “ Officers and gentlemen,” that was what we were. We were very young, the ages then were 14 to 18—but we were “officers and gentlemen.” Caperton, Vinton and Stoney were members of the graduating class who were retained at the Naval Academy to drill and instruct the “ June plebes.” We got into white working clothes and these three first-class men gave us our first instruction and our first drills. Merrill Miller, commander, and Caperton, Vinton and Stoney, midshipmen, gave us the first knowledge we had of what it really meant to be “ officers and gentlemen, and we retain them all in loving memory. They were “offiicers and gentlemen,” they treated us as “ officers and gentlemen,” and they required and expected us to live and conduct ourselves as “ officers and gentlemen.” As we look back on those days, the thing that looms big is the ideal of conduct and character expressed by “ officers and gentlemen.” We didn’t then and don t now separate the words or the ideals they represent.
B— said: I think in those days class standing meant more to us than simply learning our lessons, it meant making good. We were there to study and duty was to learn, high marks meant duty well done. We looked at it that way and the authorities gave our class standing weight in their consideration of us. If a man did not work and keep up we felt he had not made good. When he studied hard and began to pick up in his class standing we looked at him in a different light, he had our respect as one who had shown himself a success. Do you remember how we changed our opinion of Paris and Taylor when they began to go up in class standing ? Though they were in the upper class we took note of it, the whole cadet corps knew of it and respected them accordingly.”
I he atmosphere of the Academy was full of the idea of “ officers and gentlemen, ’ the idea of noblesse oblige was in the air. It was our duty to make good in our studies as it would be later to handle ships and govern men, all living up to the navy standard of officers and gentlemen.”
Again B— said: “ Do you know, recently when some of the cadets were studying hard the remainder of the class compelled them to let up, they were making it too hard for the rest.” Forty years ago that would not have been thought of, much less acted upon.
The superintendents of the Naval Academy in our day were Christopher Raymond Perry Rodgers, magnificent, imposing, polished, the Chesterfield of the navy, the most impressive figure of a naval officer I have ever seen, and Foxhall A. Parker, brilliant officer, student, gallant gentleman, one of the most loved and admired officers of his day—and both of them embodying in appearance, character and conduct the high ideals of honor, patriotism and duty conveyed by the expression “officers and gentlemen.’’ The Academy was a place of work and study. Rice and Johnson were writing their calculus and initiating the course in naval architecture that, starting with Gatewood and Bowles, has given us the naval constructors that have made our modern navy. Hendrickson with Baker, Walker and others were investigating the mathematical theories of the old mathematicians, and the courses which they dealt with were being introduced to us as algebraic equations. Sampson was to us the embodiment of physical knowledge. T have never known his equal at explanation, and under him Munroe was beginning his investigation of the nitro substitution products from which he developed the smokeless powder which he gave to the navy. Michelson was measuring the velocity of light, the most authoritative up to that time and the model for all later determinations. Cit Terry was teaching Sprague, Emmett and Louis Duncan the elements of electricity. But why attempt to list the work being done when the heads of the departments were officers like Harrison, Howell, Sampson, Mahan, Schley, Hendrickson and Rice, and instructors and drill officers like Brownson, Knox. Ingersoll, Folger, Gridley. McCalla, Very, Roper. Knight and Caperton, they and their associates setting the example of duty and work, the obligation to make good? It is not strange that these men and this spirit, this ideal of “ officers and gentlemen,’’ produced Mayo, Benson, Sims and Wilson, among those who remained in the service, and Sprague, Emmett, Duncan,- Hollis, Schell, Spangler, McFarland, Bowles, Hunt, Schwerin, Weeks, Weller, Semple, Kent and Scott, among those who went into civil life.
We had to work and we did work in those days, and our work then at the Academy was to study. Baseball, football and rowing were sports and recreations. We spent little time at balls and parties, class germans were unknown, our pay was $500 a year and we were allowed one ration, 30 cents a day, and we saved enough to pay Beilis and Brooks Brothers and Schuyler Hartley Graham and the rest of them for our outfits and we left the Academy with high hopes and empty pockets, but we did not carry a load of debt. We knew the Academy course, it was ours, we would not forget it. During the war with Germany I had to do with the education of young men for commission and I often heard, “ Well, I had that at college, I knew it then, but that was four years ago.” We did not have to speak of our Naval Academy course in the past tense four years after or now after 40 years we have it now. In the Officer Material School of the 12th Naval District it was attempted “ that practical professional instruction shall cover the same ground as that given at the U. S. Naval Academy, together with such further practical work as the greater age and wider experience of these students may enable them to assimilate.” The examinations were held by the permanent standing board of the navy yard and stations, regular navy officers in no way connected with the school, and the examinations were made so easy that a failure to pass was uncommon; of the last class from 61 who passed the physical examination only one failed, of the class before that from 56 who passed the physical examination none failed. Yet five months before I had called the attention to the easy examinations and suggested that they be made harder.
One of my early surprises when I came on duty in the reserve during the war was to hear an officer correct a yeoman (f.) who spoke of an officer as “ that gentleman ” and explain to her that she should say “ that officer,” but that she didn’t know whether he was a gentleman or not. -1 smiled at what I thought was his joke, and then discovered it was no joke, that a new standard has taken the place of the old “ officers and gentlemen,” a new standard of efficiency, that the term “ sea going ” was a modern expression of commendation, and that “ hard boiled ” was also an appellation to be desired. I found out that the old jeer that naval officers were “ college professors and dudes,” with Sampson as the typical “ college professor,” and Dewey as the typical dude, could no longer be made, that many young officers were taking the grommets out of their caps, leaving their shoes unpolished and generally cultivating an appearance and manner which would remove any probability of their being reproached as “ dudes.” It is a very old saying, “The apparel oft proclaims the man,” and the advice “ Rich be thy apparel as thy person afford ” is still good. I fear that in the pursuit of efficiency, the appearance of hard work and readiness for toil may be mistaken for real efficiency, and that the departing from the old standards expressed by “ officers and gentlemen ” may cause the loss of that sense of noblesse oblige which made it incumbent to do thoroughly in spirit and truth the duty at hand, and which would not tolerate “getting by,” and which did not permit of “passing the buck.” Emile Faguey of the French Academy, in his criticism of the spirit of democracy in France, has written of “ The Cult of Incompetence ” and “ The Dread of Responsibility,” and though he expressly disclaims any reference to American developments of the faults he criticises, and confines his criticism to France alone, nevertheless much of what he says applies as well to us, to the Naval Academy and to the navy. There is a pride, an aristocracy of effort and conduct, a standard of “ officers and gentlemen ” which is necessary to sustained effort and the attainment of high aims, and we must not lose sight of that truth and seek efficiency through surface appearance.
About 30 years ago I was talking with the son of Theodore Gary of the independent telephone companies, and asked him what he was going to be when he grew up. He answered, “ I am going to be fat,” and in answer to my “ Why ? ” he said, “ So I will have lots of money.” That was the result of the observation of a boy of six, but the successful man he is to-day would not approve his early deductions.
As I think over our talk I question, is the Naval Academy and consequently the navy in growing bigger and more democratic also losing something of the high spirit that made for thoroughness? Is there a connection between unpolished shoes and soft- topped caps, and a brake on hard studying and the easy examinations? Is the appearance of being “sea going” and “hard boiled ” only the outgrowth of the same sort of reasoning that caused young Gary to plan to be fat? Or, am I merely growing old?