Brief description:
The Angry Story Behind West Point's Farewell to Honor
This is a unique book (actually a play) written by a West Pointer. The ghosts of West Pointers past an present assemble on the Plain when Sylvanus Thayer convenes an assembly to pass judgment on the 90 cadets discharged during the 1951 seating scandal. Alumni, faculty and cadet representatives express their convictions, then following emininent "moralists" take the stage to pronounce their surprising (and conflicting) judgements: Socrates, Schopenhauer, Shakespeare, and Napoleon.
This book is written in anger - an anger laced with surprising flashes of malevolent humor - but nevertheless a real and devastating anger which strains at the words and flares out repeatedly against two objectives: first, the negligence and the near-criminal guilt of those in authority at West Point who by their unbelievable weakness in permitting the game of football to encroach upon their obligation as teachers and counselors of the Cadets at the Military Academy brought about the Cheating Scandal of 1951; second, the smugness and narrow mindedness of all, authorities, officers, graduates, and cadets alike, who have heaped contumely upon the Ninety Cadets and then closed their minds in hypocritical and puritanical bigotry. With the publication of this book, three years of their cunningly contrived silence are ended and their secret becomes known. In these pages there is proof positive that the Ninety Cadets were not alone in bidding farewell to Honor in 1951.
This is a unique book (actually a play) written by a West Pointer. The ghosts of West Pointers past an present assemble on the Plain when Sylvanus Thayer convenes an assembly to pass judgment on the 90 cadets discharged during the 1951 seating scandal. Alumni, faculty and cadet representatives express their convictions, then following emininent "moralists" take the stage to pronounce their surprising (and conflicting) judgements: Socrates, Schopenhauer, Shakespeare, and Napoleon.
This book is written in anger - an anger laced with surprising flashes of malevolent humor - but nevertheless a real and devastating anger which strains at the words and flares out repeatedly against two objectives: first, the negligence and the near-criminal guilt of those in authority at West Point who by their unbelievable weakness in permitting the game of football to encroach upon their obligation as teachers and counselors of the Cadets at the Military Academy brought about the Cheating Scandal of 1951; second, the smugness and narrow mindedness of all, authorities, officers, graduates, and cadets alike, who have heaped contumely upon the Ninety Cadets and then closed their minds in hypocritical and puritanical bigotry. With the publication of this book, three years of their cunningly contrived silence are ended and their secret becomes known. In these pages there is proof positive that the Ninety Cadets were not alone in bidding farewell to Honor in 1951.
Publication
St. Johnsbury Vermont, (1954) 1st,Hdbk,DJ,,Fair