At West Point

To Versailles (150 years ago) swarmed empurpled princelings, intent on an implicit mission of state. At the summit of the Escolier de Marbre they were met by offiicious accoucheurs of Marie Antoinette; were neatly ranged so that they might attest the birth of a Dauphin of France, without actually smothering Marie' or trampling the expected Dauphin under foot.

All went well. In time news winged to General Washington, encamped at West Point with 10,000 men, that another Valois had come squalling into the world. The General was just polishing off the Revolutionary War. France was our staunch ally. To the Father of His Country it occurred to order rum, barrels of it, in which his 10,000 men might toast the Dauphin's health. For himself and his officers the General ordered waters more refined if no less potent. A huge arbor was constructed, a celebration decreed. At 4 o'clock in the afternoon officers and their ladies sat down to dinner. As the dinner proceeded the Dauphin's health was toasted 13 times. That the 10,000 who toasted him in rum might do so in unison, 13 salvos of cannon echoed the polite felicitations of the General and his immediate guests. At 7:30 in the evening General Washington decreed a feu de jolie (a firing of guns in token of joy). The Hudson volley reverberated almost to Tarrytown, where rose as yet no wigwams of millionaires. Last week the cadets of West Point held their annual echo of good General Washington's feu de jolie. A thousand cadets and their two thousand guests (the femmes of cadets are invariably chaperoned), took the place of the 10,000 joyous rum tasters.

The historic "arbor" was there-- risen again as it has risen almost every year since the founding of the Academy in 1819. Cadets had revamped tents and other military gear into the likeness of "triumphal arches," Japanese gardens, and "Oriental fantasies," and "The Camp Illuminator," which is now the event's official title, lasted far into the dawn, with tireless plebes (fourth class men) furnishing the music and serving as lone sentries who guarded the outposts of gaiety.

With morning came "lights out" and "taps." Guests and illumination were routed by the crass glimmer of day. In a disillusioning dawn the Cadets' Summer Training Camp was struck. The shade of good General George vanished to toast the Valois Dauphin's health in nectar, to wheedle St. Peter into ordering 13 rousing trumps.

At West Point a sham military engagement was staged last week --the first to which the press and public have been invited, the first at which "live ammunition" has been used. "Protected" by an actual barrage, cadets advanced against an "army" of "24 in. isosceles triangles, each signed with a cadet's name."

The namesake triangles proved no match for the cadets. Fifteen automobile loads of staff officers, observers, declared the Isosceleans wiped out.