As the nation and the Army emerged from World War I, the War
Department made efforts to make the Military Academy more
responsive to the needs of the Army, hoping to ensure that
the Army would be better prepared for future conflicts.
Concerned by reports of the academy’s shortcomings, the
Chief of Staff of the Army, Peyton C. March, appointed
Douglas MacArthur as superintendent and charged him with
rebuilding the academy.
MacArthur believed strongly that the traditions of the Corps
should be preserved, even as the academy adapted to meet the
requirements of the Army and the advances of its civilian
counterparts. Part of the tradition rested on the honor
system. To reinforce the credibility of the system, and to
ensure that it followed some basic rules and procedures, the
academy established the Cadet Honor Committee in 1922. In
so doing, the institution assumed a greater role in
promoting the responsible investigation of honor incidents
and linking honorable conduct to the responsibilities of
officership.
MacArthur argued that educational methods needed to be
updated. He faced resistance from many graduates and much
of the Academic Board, partly because they believed the
Academy’s educational program sufficient, and partly in
reaction to a leader they considered presumptuous, having
only graduated from the Military Academy himself 16 years
before. He contended that officers required a diverse
education, including additional grounding in the humanities,
in order to be flexible enough to meet the demands of modern
warfare. MacArthur based some of his criticism on the
assessment of Harvard president Charles W. Eliot, who
argued, “During the Great War, West Pointers were unable to
adapt to new methods in the fields of supply and procurement
because of their stifling training.” Rather than have
academy graduates become potential liabilities in modern
warfare, MacArthur sought to place them at the forefront of
a changing officer corps.
To accomplish this ambitious task, MacArthur was determined
to “increase cadet responsibility, develop initiative, bring
the academy into a newer and closer relationship with the
Army at large, substitute subjective for objective
discipline, broaden the curriculum to keep it abreast of the
best civilian thought on education and, in sum, ‘deliver a
product trained with a view to teaching, leading and
inspiring the modern citizen’ in the next war.” Although
the institution had been moving in that direction, MacArthur
lent his considerable energy and charisma to the
acceleration of reform at the academy.
Despite disagreement between MacArthur and the Academic
Board, the academy undertook some important reform during
his tenure, and the curriculum underwent some much-needed
improvement. MacArthur and the board agreed on the idea of
sending prospective instructors to study for a year at the
best civilian universities. He sent members of the faculty
to visit top civilian institutions and brought in visiting
professors from those institutions. He placed greater
emphasis on public speaking and brought the military course
of instruction up to date by incorporating study of the
campaigns of World War I. He abolished field training at
Fort Clinton, which was such a small area in the immediate
vicinity of barracks that no serious “field” training could
be conducted. To provide a more rigorous summer training
program, he sent cadets to Camp Dix, New Jersey. Most
revolutionary of all, he liberalized pass and leisure-time
policies for upper-class cadets, allowing them to interact
more freely with each other and the outside world and take
individual responsibility for their own conduct. All of
this was accomplished during his tenure over the objections
of many of the members of the more conservative Academic
Board. After his departure, many of these reforms departed
with him, but he had spurred the wheels of change, and
subsequent superintendents would build on his foundations.
After years of contending that the distinction of a West
Point diploma was sufficient, the academy began to
reconsider the issue. Cadets and graduates argued that the
institution should grant academic degrees, and their
supporters noted the rising importance of degrees and the
difficulties of graduates seeking advanced positions or
civilian positions without them. The academy, however,
declined to push the issue. On the other hand, in 1925, the
academy sought and received accreditation by the Association
of American Universities, the only university-accrediting
agency in the nation at that time. Academy officials sought
this when they learned that its first Rhodes Scholarship
recipients, of 1925, would be denied appropriate standing at
Oxford without such accreditation.
Graduates of the
Military Academy and other service academies continued to
push for the granting of the Bachelor of Science degree and,
in 1933, Congress gave the military service academies the
authority to grant Bachelor of Science degrees to all
graduates retroactive to when the institutions were formally
accredited. Four years later, Congress amended the
legislation to permit the granting of degrees to all living
graduates.
Military training evolved to meet the Army’s demands for
officers trained in modern weapons and tactics. To help
enable the institution to expand tactical training
opportunities in the late 1930s, the federal government
purchased additional land immediately to the south and
southwest of the Academy. West Point, which totaled only
3,600 acres in the mid 1930s, increased to over 15,000 acres
a decade later. This growth allowed the entire military
instruction program, including mounted combat maneuvers and
artillery firing, to take place on the West Point Military
Reservation.
Beyond the military and academic programs, MacArthur and his
successors further expanded the already rigorous physical
education program. Impressed with the ability of
physically fit officers to inspire young troops in World War
I, MacArthur began to promote the view of “every cadet, an
athlete” by expanding the intercollegiate sports program and
instituting compulsory intramural sports for all cadets, a
requirement that still exists.
He also coined the
following, oft-quoted phrase that expressed his view of the
importance of sports to the Army:
"Upon the fields of friendly strife are sown the seeds that,
upon other fields, on other days, will bear the fruits of
victory.”
As the curriculum expanded and MacArthur’s successors
advanced their own reform programs, West Point again grew in
size and physical layout. In 1935, Congress increased the
Corps of Cadets to 1,960. As more cadets filled the
barracks and classrooms, another building program was
undertaken and completed by 1938.
