Well,the king was out of the hole;and on terms satisfactory to the Church and the rest of the aristocracy,no doubt.Men write many fine and plausible arguments in support of monarchy,but the fact remains that where every man in a State has a vote,brutal laws are impossible.Arthur's people were of course poor material for a republic,because they had been debased so long by monarchy;and yet even they would have been intelligent enough to make short work of that law which the king had just been administering if it had been submitted to their full and free vote.There is a phrase which has grown so common in the world's mouth that it has come to seem to have sense and meaning --the sense and meaning implied when it is used;that is the phrase which refers to this or that or the other nation as possibly being "capable of selfgovernment";and the implied sense of it is,that there has been a nation somewhere,some time or other which WASN'Tcapable of it --wasn't as able to govern itself as some self-appointed specialists were or would be to govern it.The master minds of all nations,in all ages,have sprung in affluent multitude from the mass of the nation,and from the mass of the nation only --not from its privileged classes;and so,no matter what the nation's intellectual grade was;whether high or low,the bulk of its ability was in the long ranks of its nameless and its poor,and so it never saw the day that it had not the material in abundance whereby to govern itself.Which is to assert an always self-proven fact:that even the best governed and most free and most enlightened monarchy is still behind the best condition attainable by its people;and that the same is true of kindred governments of lower grades,all the way down to the lowest.
King Arthur had hurried up the army business altogether beyond my calculations.
I had not supposed he would move in the matter while I was away;and so I had not mapped out a scheme for determining the merits of officers;Ihad only remarked that it would be wise to submit every candidate to a sharp and searching examination;and privately I meant to put together a list of military qualifications that nobody could answer to but my West Pointers.That ought to have been attended to before I left;for the king was so taken with the idea of a standing army that he couldn't wait but must get about it at once,and get up as good a scheme of examination as he could invent out of his own head.
I was impatient to see what this was;and to show,too,how much more admirable was the one which I should display to the Examining Board.Iintimated this,gently,to the king,and it fired his curiosity When the Board was assembled,I followed him in;and behind us came the candidates.
One of these candidates was a bright young West Pointer of mine,and with him were a couple of my West Point professors.
When I saw the Board,I did not know whether to cry or to laugh.The head of it was the officer known to later centuries as Norroy King-at-Arms!
The two other members were chiefs of bureaus in his department;and all three were priests,of course;all officials who had to know how to read and write were priests.
My candidate was called first,out of courtesy to me,and the head of the Board opened on him with official solemnity:
"Name?"
"Mal-ease."
"Son of?"
"Webster."
"Webster --Webster.H'm --I --my memory faileth to recall the name.
Condition?"
"Weaver."
"Weaver!--God keep us!"
The king was staggered,from his summit to his foundations;one clerk fainted,and the others came near it.The chairman pulled himself together,and said indignantly:
"It is sufficient.Get you hence."
But I appealed to the king.I begged that my candidate might be examined.
The king was willing,but the Board,who were all well-born folk,implored the king to spare them the indignity of examining the weaver's son.I knew they didn't know enough to examine him anyway,so I joined my prayers to theirs and the king turned the duty over to my professors.I had had a blackboard prepared,and it was put up now,and the circus began.It was beautiful to hear the lad lay out the science of war,and wallow in details of battle and siege,of supply,transportation,mining and countermining,grand tactics,big strategy and little strategy,signal service,infantry,cavalry,artillery,and all about siege guns,field guns,gatling guns,rifled guns,smooth bores,musket practice,revolver practice --and not a solitary word of it all could these catfish make head or tail of,you understand --and it was handsome to see him chalk off mathematical nightmares on the blackboard that would stump the angels themselves,and do it like nothing,too --all about eclipses,and comets,and solstices,and constellations,and mean time,and sidereal time,and dinner time,and bedtime,and every other imaginable thing above the clouds or under them that you could harry or bullyrag an enemy with and make him wish he hadn't come --and when the boy made his military salute and stood aside at last,I was proud enough to hug him,and all those other people were so dazed they looked partly petrified,partly drunk,and wholly caught out and snowed under.I judged that the cake was ours,and by a large majority.
Education is a great thing.This was the same youth who had come to West Point so ignorant that when I asked him,"If a general officer should have a horse shot under him on the field of battle,what ought he to do?"answered up naively and said:
"Get up and brush himself."
One of the young nobles was called up now.I thought I would question him a little myself.I said:
"Can your lordship read?"
His face flushed indignantly,and he fired this at me:
"Takest me for a clerk?I trow I am not of a blood that --""Answer the question!"
He crowded his wrath down and made out to answer "No.""Can you write?"