OCR Text |
Show (ACHIEVEMENTS IN IGNORANCE, Geenral Barry's report concerning )the deficient education of many candidates can-didates examined for admission to West Point Military Academy is interesting in-teresting from more than one point oi view. These young men were not taken ta-ken at hazard from the mass of their fellows, nor were they merely young pietL-of average ability. Each of them Iiad been selected and chosen as a cominee for a cadetship. Each of them had presumably prepared for the examination he knew awaited him. pays the New York World. Yet many of them disclosed a degree of ignorance ignor-ance concerning history and literaa-ture literaa-ture that could hardly be surpassed .among . illiterates. One of these aspirants as-pirants for West Point stated that !Lee and Stonewall Jackson had fought at Princeton and Trenton, another that the battle of Waterloo was fought between "Kepolican" and "Welling ford." Of Mason and Dixo-n's line it was said it "divides Maryland from Georgia." Among the "most important import-ant writers of the nineteenth century" were included "Eller Wheeler Wilcox, Elbert Huggard, Jack London and Dorothy Dix." These young men are graduates of American schools. To them have been open from their boyhood boy-hood all the advantages of public libraries li-braries and an incessant and well-nigh well-nigh countless stream of magazines -and newspapers. They surely are not dull boys nor unambitious. Their ignorance, ig-norance, therefore, is as discreditable to their teachers as to themselves. The idea of reclaiming Russian swamp lands Is not new. Like many other valuable ideas it sprang up in the fertile mind of Peter the Great, who built his capital in a swamp, because be-cause It was the only place he could find affording access to the sea. Peter selected the Holmogorl district in the province of Archangel for raising Dutch cattle because he noticed the resemblance between the grass of Holland and that of the Holmogorl -district. It is now pointed out that at small expense the vast swamps in the province of Archangel can be turned into lands covered with the Holmogorl grass, and that after a few years a large portion of it will be fit for raising cereals and vegetables. A systematic reclamation movement is : now planned by the Russian depart- ; inent of agriculture. |