d
traveled pretty firmly through the yearling class.

It is against all West Point traditions to make a hero of a plebe.
Not a word of congratulation came to Cadet Prescott. It wouldn't
even save the young man from being the victim of a lot of hazing
pranks, for these inflictions were deemed necessary to the plebe's
training. None the less, the incident, as it became known, caused
the impression to spread that Cadet Prescott was a good fellow and
that he was likely to prove a credit to the grand old United States
Military Academy.

Hazing a thing of the past at West Point! The War Department and
the authorities at the Military Academy have done all they could,
and will continue to do all in their power to stamp out hazing.

Since the Congressional investigation in the early years of the
present century, much has been done to cut down the rigor of
hazing at West Point. General Mills stamped out much of it with
iron vigor. Colonel Scott dealt many hard blows to the system.
Other officers have bent their energies to the same problems. The
way of the hazer is perilous nowadays. In a word, of late years
hazing has been at a very low level at the United States Military
Academy.

It is, however, a practical impossibility to stamp out hazing wholly
in an institution where hazing has been one of the most cherished
traditions through many generations of cadets.

The hazing of today is milder; there is less of it, and, with rare
exceptions, it is less brutal. Yet hazing, in one form or another,
will doubtless continue at West Point through the twentieth
century as it did through the nineteenth.

The form of hazing has changed, if not the spirit. Sorely pressed by
tac.s, and by other officers stationed at West Point, the yearlings,
or second-year men, who do most of the hazing, have developed
new forms of the ancient sport, and some of these forms may be
carried on in actual sight of an Army officer without exciting his
suspicions.

Where possible, some of the old-style forms of more innocent and
purely mischievous hazing are retained. Where "necessary" new
hazes are employed that are bound to tax the best efforts of
disciplinary or other officers to detect.

Hazing is one of the diversions of men of mature age on the floor
of the New York Stock Exchange. Even in the United States
Senate there are recognized ways of hazing a new Senator who
displays too little reverence for the traditions of that august body.

Then wh