United States Military Academy West Point - Howitzer Yearbook (West Point, NY)

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1 ADMIRAL T. H. MOORER CHAIRMAN OF THE JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF GENERAL CREIGHTON ABRAMS CHIEF OF STAFF OF THE ARMY

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THE HONORABLE SECRET AR Y OF DEFENSE JAMES SCHLESINGER THE HONORABLE SECRETARY OF THE ARMY HOWARD CALLAWAY

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LIEUTENANT GENERAL WILLIAM A. KNOWLTON, SUPERINTENDENT— UNITED It gives me particular pleasure to write this message to the Class of 1 974. Mrs. Knowlton and I have sensed a rather special relationship with your class for we all arrived in 1970. Your Plebe year was my Plebe year as Superintendent. Together we have been through many challenges to the profession which you have selected and many changes in the ways of preparing for this pro- fession. Those of us concerned with your education and training have tried to span the gap between the future and the past. Outsiders who look at West Point agree that this has been a decade of great change here, particularly during the period which you have spent as cadets. Yet this change at West Point has sometimes not been seen by you who were part of it. Perhaps this is because we are a mixture of the past and the future. As for the past, there was knowledgeable comment in a book review by a noted civilian professor, written while you were First Classmen: But there are limits to the extent to which the academies can or should be made to resemble civilian universities. For one thing they oper- ate in four fields simultaneously: liberal arts, engineer- ing, military science, and what can only be called char- acter formation . . . One of these fields — character formation — has no counterpart at most nonsectarian universities. Its importance derives directly from the pre- cedence of the combat ethos, even in this age of tech- nological warfare. Order, precision, discipline, loyalty, and courage are prized by military leaders because they are helpful in the confusion and peril of battle. Independent studies done, even in recent days, on what gives a military leader these qualities come back to ancient words like country, honor, duty and tradition. And so there are immutables in the things West Point has always done. As for the future, we have tried to be attentive to the thought expressed by a favorite of many of you, Kahlil