CHAPTER XVI.
TAPS SOUNDS ON SUMMER Cadet Dodge spent the last days of the encampment on sick report.
He got word that Mr.Poultney was one of the yearlings concerned in his discomfiture on post number three, and boldly confronted the yearling with the charge.
In the fight that followed Dodge received a fearful walloping from Mr.Poultney.
The laws of courtesy are enforced by these fights.

A new man, entering the United States Military Academy, often has a most exaggerated idea of his own importance and merits.

In some instances the new cadet is likely to disregard the rights of upper class men.

A fight puts the offending plebe where he belongs.
Further, the knowledge that he will have to fight for every serious infraction of the rules of courtesy results in quickly making a disciplined soldier and considerate gentleman out of the cadet who is inclined to be bumptious.
In the training of personal character it may readily be believed that the cadet's plebe year, with its "chalk-line" and repression, is worth all the rest of the time spent at West Point.
Milk-sops and peace-at-any-price advocates may as well turn their attention away from West Point.

These ultra-peaceable ones, who long for the promotion of peace through the abolition of all armies, have at hand an experiment that can be carried out only on a smaller scale.
Let these peace-at-any-price agitators, in a given community, set about to stamp out crime by abolishing the police force! An army is merely a force of international policemen.
* * * * * * In the last days of August the furloughed new second class returned.