Then there are the county line regiments, such as the Yorkshires, the Kents, and the Durhams.  In this war each county wanted to read about its own regiments at the same time as about the Guards, just as Kansans at home would want to read about the Kansas regiment and Georgians about the Georgia regiment.  The most trying feature of the censorship to the British public was its refusal to allow the exploitation of regiments.  The staff was adamant on this point; for the staff was thinking for the whole and of the interests of the whole.  In the French and the German armies, as in our regular army, regiments are known by numbers.

The young man who lives in the big house on the hill, the son of the man of wealth and power in the community, as a rule does not go to West Point.  None of the youth of our self-called aristocracy which came up the golden road in a generation past those in modest circumstances who have generations of another sort back of them, think of going into the First Cavalry or the First Infantry for a few years as a part of the career of their class.  A few rich men’s sons enter our army, but only enough to prove the rule by the exception.  They do not regard the army as “the thing.”  It does not occur to them that they ought to do something for their country.  Rather, their country ought to do something for them.

But sink the plummet a little deeper and these are not our aristocracy nor our ruling class, which is too numerous and too sound of thought and principle for them to feel at home in that company.  Any boy, however humble his origin, may go to West Point if he can pass the competitive examination.  Europe, particularly Germany, would not approve of this; but we think it the best way.  The average graduate of the Point, whether the son of a doctor, a lawyer, or a farmer, sticks to the army as his profession.  We maintain the Academy for the strict business purpose of teaching young men how to train our army in time of peace and to lead and direct it in time of action.

Our future officers enter West Point when they are two years younger than is the average at Sandhurst; the course is four years compared with two at Sandhurst.  I should venture to say that West Point is the harder grind; that the graduate of the Point has a more specifically academic military training than the graduate of Sandhurst.  This is not saying that he may be any better in the performance of the simple duties of a company officer.  It is not a new criticism that we train everybody at West Point to be a general, when many of the students may never rise above the command of a battalion.  However, it is a significant fact that at the close of the Civil War every army commander was a West Point man and so were most of the corps commanders.

The doors are open in the British army for a man to rise from the ranks; not as wide as in our army, but open.  The Chief of Staff of the British Expeditionary Force, Sir William Robertson, was in the ranks for ten years.  No man not a West Pointer had a position equivalent in importance to his at the close of the Civil War.  His rise would have been possible in no other European army.